


Depth Over Distance

by damalur



Series: Depth Over Distance [1]
Category: Psych
Genre: Beards (Facial Hair), Buddy Action Romance, Case Fic, Cats, Complete, F/M, Pining, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-28
Updated: 2014-05-09
Packaged: 2018-01-17 09:30:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 7
Words: 70,903
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1382479
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/damalur/pseuds/damalur
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A requited love story about duty, diners, the Freeway Series, and grace under all kinds of fire.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I am so late to the party it ain't even funny. This story bears very little relation to canon, especially canon after S3. I think we'll all be happiest if we just don't worry about it. 
> 
> Many thanks to [slybrunette](http://slybrunette.tumblr.com/) and [andthenisay](http://andthenisay.tumblr.com/), brainstorming superheroes, who made this story so much better than it was. The staggering amount of investigative procedure I made up is solely my liability. Lassiter belongs to the wilderness. Juliet belongs to herself. My title belongs to Ben Howard (sorry, Ben Howard!).
> 
>  **Warnings:** Discussion of non-graphic sexual assault and child abuse in the context of a criminal case.

There were three victims this time, a boy and two girls, all around the age of ten: dead of neglect. They were found in the basement of a dilapidated shoreside house, little bodies curled together like puppies in a pile, huddled for warmth and whatever small measure of comfort they could spare each other. Juliet had seen abuse before; this was comparable, or worse.

"Signs of sexual assault," she said. "The girls have rope burns around their wrists. I don't think any of them are related."

"We'll run full genetic profiles," Carlton said. He was crouched beside her, angling a flashlight over her shoulder while the forensics team swarmed behind them, taking photographs and collecting samples. His face was carved from rock, from marble, from steel; how completely he could wipe every sign of life and expression never failed to amaze her. Juliet felt everything, and showed it, and was still the best at her job. Her partner acted like the world would crack if he showed any measure of the devastation she knew he was hiding. Kids rattled him far more than they did her.

"We've got everything we're going to get right now," he added. "Let's get some fresh air, see if we can't pull any missing persons files that match the victims. Come on, O'Hara." She followed him outside, yanking off her latex gloves and tossing them in the direction of some poor intern before she fished her phone out of her pocket. Lassiter's hand was on her wrist before she even started to dial.

"Carlton?"

His long fingers relaxed and then released her. "Don't call anyone else in yet," he said.

"Any reason why?" She'd planned to call Vick and then Shawn and then every damn consultant or technician on the department's books, but Carlton was scowling over her shoulder now. "Tell me in the car?" she asked.

"Fine." They climbed into the Crown Vic—Carlton in the driver's side, Juliet in the passenger's—and pulled the doors shut. He started rummaging for his gum; she retrieved it from the glove compartment and handed him a piece before taking one herself.

"I don't think this is domestic abuse or an isolated kidnapping," he said.

"A serial kidnapper?" She was skeptical. "We don't have that many missing kids—"

"That have been reported in Santa Barbara. Look, O'Hara—call it a hunch, but I think this is gang-related, maybe Immaculata."

"Kidnapping for ransom...or, no. Damn it, Carlton, there haven't been any signs of Immaculata involvement in—"

"Child prostitution?" he finished. "No, but we've seen plenty of other gangs branch out into that kind of thing."

"God," she said. "I wish it were some other gang. We don't have anything concrete on them. All those murders, all those extortion cases and car thefts, and we have squat."

"Yeah, well, that's why I don't want Spencer on this. Not yet, at least." She looked at him hard, searching for any sign of mulish rivalry, but he met her gaze head-on, and she remembered how two weeks ago he'd put himself between Shawn and an idiot with a gun. He could claim that he hated Spencer for his showboating, but Juliet knew the truth—that he'd prefer to keep Shawn and Gus far, far away from any case this dirty and this potentially dangerous. Immaculata was a small outfit, virtual unknowns, but there were enough rumors to make even an old hound dog like Carlton wary.

"We'll keep it as an option," she said, and he sighed noisily at her and started the car. She didn't ask if he'd heard her, if he was making the concession. She didn't have to ask; she already knew.

-

They left the station together nine hours later, both bleary-eyed, however much Carlton tried to hide it. He held the door for her while she struggled into her blazer and dug for her keys.

"Heading home?" she asked.

"Probably. Why, O'Hara, you have somewhere else to be at"—he checked his watch; he was one of the few men she knew who still wore one—"one in the morning?"

"I'm hungry," she said, "and if I go home now I'll fall asleep before I eat anything. Want to come to the City Diner with me?" She rued asking as soon as she said the words, sure he'd think less of her for the whim—but it still didn't surprise her when he accepted. While he never initiated any pro-bono activities, he hadn't turned her down since the day her probationary period officially ended. "Meet you there?" he said.

"Actually, if you don't mind, I'd rather you drop me off. I'm not sure I could drive in a straight line right now." Her hair was falling apart, too, and she had a coffee stain on the front of her blouse, and she didn't care about any of it. Nine hours of hard paperwork, and they'd identified only one of the victims; tomorrow there would be another nine hours, or ten, or twelve, and the day after that still more, days of gruesome photographs and autopsy results, of sketches of lost children, and of watching Carlton turn the pictures face-down before he ate lunch. 

"Sure thing," he said, and swerved from his original course toward their patrol car. He picked her up a lot now, or she picked him up; they didn't live far from each other, and it seemed stupid to park two cars when they only needed one. Carpooling was better for the environment, went Juliet's reasoning, but she wasn't sure why he was willing to indulge her, particularly when he preferred to conduct his mornings in absolute silence.

The diner was eight blocks inland from the SBPD headquarters, and unlike most of her favorite eateries, not a cop establishment. It had the hip retro-fifties interior of a dozen other restaurants, but Juliet liked it because it was open all hours and served Belgian waffles with real maple syrup. Despite the real maple syrup, though, the seats were not sticky, and the bathroom didn't make her gag.

The waitress waved them to their regular booth in the front corner against the windows; Juliet excused herself to the restroom and returned in time to catch her partner stirring a third packet of sugar into a cup of coffee. He swept the wrappers to the side and pushed the mug to her. Strong and sweet, she thought, just how I like it; and then, God, I'm tired.

"Hey, watch it, O'Hara," Carlton said.

"What?"

"Unless you take your coffee with hair now, in which case, carry on." He pointed, and she went cross-eyed following the line of his finger to the piece of hair that had escaped its confines. Her hair was getting _so_ long now—she should really cut it, that much loose hair had to look shapeless and old-fashioned.

"Thanks," she said, and tucked the offending piece away. "Who the hell could do something like that? I'm serious, Carlton, what if we don't—"

"We will," he said.

"What if Immaculata—"

"We'll catch them anyway," he said.

"You've been after them for years, though."

"Yeah, but _we_ haven't been after them," he said, and then added, "Christ, O'Hara, don't look so _happy_ about it." He hid behind his own cup of coffee, swallowing half the thing although it was still steaming. "Talk about something else," he ordered.

"It's going to be personal."

"Fine, whatever." He flagged down the waitress. "Can we get some more coffee? And a breakfast platter for me. O'Hara?"

"Let me guess, honey," said the waitress—Temperance, said her name tag. "Belgian waffles?"

"With extra syrup. Thank you," said Juliet. She waited until Temperance had disappeared into the kitchen before picked up their thread of conversation. "Why did you sleep with Lucinda Barry?"

"Oh god, not this again. Listen, if I have done _anything_ to make you feel uncomfortable—"

"What—Carlton, no!"

He narrowed his eyes at her. "Ooh...kay. What gives, O'Hara?" 

Juliet didn't have any particular reason to ask, but the question had been bothering her all the same: always there, in the back of her head, wondering if—wondering why— He wasn't exactly as straight-laced as he liked to present himself, was Carlton, but he had a streak of old-fashioned honor all the same. It was hard to imagine him flouting regulations so blatantly, particularly in a way that jeopardized his own career and did more than jeopardize the career of his more junior, more _female_ partner.

"I'm tired?" she tried. "I was curious?"

His gaze dropped away, and he busied himself with rolling up his shirtsleeves. "If I answer— _if_ —then I want compensation."

"A question for a question? How Hannibal Lecter of you."

"Fair's fair. If you want to be nosy, you have to pay the piper." She wondered if he had to buy slim-fit dress shirts, or if those were too tight through the shoulders. With his leather holster and his casually disheveled air, he could have stepped out of a fifties film noir.

"All right, quid pro quo. So come on—Lucinda Barry. I looked her up, you know. She's down in LA now." She was leaning into the table hard, now, too tired to disguise how intently she was watching for a reaction to her next bombshell. "Married," she said. He didn't flinch. "And with kids. One boy, another on they way."

Carlton snorted. "Did you get all that from hacking her Facebook page?"

"If you knew anything about Facebook, you would know that she has a public profile." The waitress slid past, topped off their coffees, bustled away. Carlton seemed amused, more than anything, but not even passionately amused; he was more engaged with Juliet's curiosity than he was with any memory of Lucinda Barry, ex-partner, ex- _partner_.

"Sounds like you know more than I do. What's your question, exactly?"

"Why?" Juliet said. "It just...doesn't seem like you."

"I'd been separated from my wife for a year-and-a-half, _and_ Victoria was already seeing someone else, _and_ I'll have you know that Lucinda made advances on _me_ —" Just like that, the flare of willingness to explain himself died. "Huh," he said, "and now I'm trying to defend it. The fact, O'Hara, is that I screwed up, and it cost a good woman her job."

"You regret it?" she said, twisting one of the empty sugar packets into a paper bow-tie.

"Not for the reason you probably think," he said. "Don't go making some pretty romantic story out of it. She was getting out of a divorce, I was separated, we were both lonely and new to the partnership. I tried to take the fall for her, but she chose to transfer. That's the long and short of it."

"It's always harder for the woman," Juliet said.

"Yeah, well." He looked out the dark window; it showed only a reflection of the diner's interior, empty save for two sad-looking detectives with haggard faces and hard eyes. "I should have thought of that."

"Carlton—" What could she say? She'd chosen to open this old hurt; she'd long suspected that he harbored a deep reservoir of guilt—what good Roman Catholic didn't?—but to ask when she had no good reason for asking, when she only wanted to satisfy herself, suddenly seemed shameful. "It takes two to tango," she offered.

"As head detective, I was technically her superior, just like I am yours. Karen has the ultimate power to promote or demote, but she takes my recommendations into consideration." He hid behind his coffee again. "Lucinda paid the price for my mistake. Glad to hear she's got a family, though."

"Do you miss her?"

_That_ made him put down his mug and grin crookedly at her. "Fishing for compliments? No, O'Hara, I don't miss her."

"Good," said Juliet.

"And that means it's my turn."

"Not good," said Juliet.

He drummed his fingers against the formica—once, twice—while he considered her, and then said, "Why do you believe Spencer's psychic?"

"Come on, really? You're wasting your question on that?"

His shrug was both nonchalant and deliberate. "Quid pro quo."

"Argh. Okay. You might have noticed that I can be kind of... _stubborn_." She leveled a finger at him in warning before he could make some smart crack. "Watch it, Carlton. My point is that sometimes I want to believe something so badly that I immerse myself in it and ignore the alternatives. When I finally got promoted to detective, I promised myself that I'd keep an open mind no matter what. That means being open to _everything_."

"Yeah, but there's improbable, and then there's ludicrous."

"You asked. What, did you think he was bribing me?"

Her partner rarely surprised her anymore, but when he did, he went for the hard, sharp shock. "I am amazed," he said, "that you don't even try to staunch your bleeding heart. No, O'Hara—that was a compliment, believe it or not."

"Oh, thanks so much," she said.

"You know what I mean—are we done with the sharing circle? Can I drink my coffee in peace?"

She leaned forward and propped her chin on her fist. "Nope. Now I'm going to tell you about my cats."

"By all means. Gosh, I would just love to hear about the little hairballs."

Juliet looked out the window and waited. There went a passing car—four-door, probably a Toyota, with one of the tail-lights out—and there went one of the street-lights, flickering twice before steadying out—

"Hell. How are your cats?"

"How nice of you to ask!" She smirked at him, to let him know he'd been caught; he saluted her in return with his fork. The waitress appeared with their food, and while she cut into her stack of waffles Juliet shared the exploits of Flower and Thumper while her partner pretended not to listen. He snorted in all the right places, though, and when she mentioned that Flower was getting bored enough during the day to claw at the curtains, he told her about an automated cat toy he'd seen on a late night infomercial.

"Although why anyone would drop twenty bucks on a toy for a cat is beyond me," he made sure to clarify, in case she thought he'd relaxed his stance on God's smaller and more defenseless creatures.

"Sure you don't," she said.

"Damn straight," he said.

Juliet, despite her delirious exhaustion, hid a smile behind her coffee mug; and when she went home, she slept the night through, with no nightmares at all.

-

No; the nightmares were for daylight, for her waking hours.

Carlton was already at the station when she arrived the next morning; if he'd slept, it hadn't been for more than a few hours, and he looked like he'd shaved and dressed with his eyes closed. He was hunched over a stack of paperwork at his desk and didn't look up until she rapped on his file cabinet.

"O'Hara," he said, and fell back in his chair, rubbing at his eyes. "We should have the coroner's report in an hour. I'm almost done with this—if you're up for it, we can go talk to Josefina de la Cruz's family as soon as I'm done."

"Sure thing," she said. "Here, I got you some coffee." She set it on the edge of the desk and popped the lid off; it was pale, cut with plenty of cream and sugar. He drank half the cup down and buried himself in paperwork again.

Juliet went to her desk, booted up her computer, and drank her own coffee while she read through her emails. There was one from Vick, asking to see her as soon as was convenient. No time like the present, Juliet thought, and got up before her ancient PC had even finished downloading all of her messages.

"Chief?" she said, sticking her head into Vick's office. "You wanted to see me?"

"Come in, Detective, and close the door behind you." Vick steepled her hands on her desktop. "This isn't about your current case, Juliet—I just wanted to have a word with you."

"About what?" 

"Sit down"—Vick waited until Juliet sank into one of the chairs and tucked her feet underneath her—"this will only take a minute, I promise. How's your partnership with Detective Lassiter?"

"I—excuse me?"

"You're getting along, working well together? No inclination to transfer?"

"Absolutely not," Juliet said, bewildered, working hard to force her mind to jump tracks from the investigation to this new mystery.

"I see," said Vick. "Then you don't know why Detective Lassiter came to me at an ungodly hour—this was before I'd had my caffeine—to say that I should think about giving you a new partner?"

"He did _what?"_

"He said—I'm quoting here—that he 'doesn't want to give you up just yet,' but that he isn't interested in 'holding you back.' In fact, he said you were perfectly capable of taking a more junior detective under your wing. He also recommended you for the special task force the Mayor and I have talked about putting together."

"That...he...that ass!"

"Uh-huh. I can see he didn't discuss this with you. Listen, O'Hara, when I started here, Detective Lassiter already had something of a reputation—impressive arrest record, dedicated, hard-working, with a real knack for thinking outside of the box. Over my years here, I watched his personal life fall apart to the point that _despite_ that dedication, his work suffered tremendously. It wasn't until you came along that I started to see the man who was the youngest head in SBPD history again. That said, I won't blame you if you want to reconsider your decision. Do you?"

"No," said Juliet, "but he and I are definitely going to be having a conversation in the near future."

"Well, then. I will, of course, take my head detective's advice into consideration, but I have no intention of splitting up my top team when neither of them seem to particularly _like_ the idea. Dismissed, O'Hara."

"Thanks," said Juliet. "I guess."

"And Juliet?"

"Yes, Chief?"

"I wouldn't worry about it too much," Vick said. "He looked like he was pulling out his own teeth, however sincere he sounded."

"Good," said Juliet, and she meant it.

—But the fact remained that she was _furious_.

She was furious, and she was tired, and she was frantic—three children dead, this was no time to be angry with Carlton—but as she watched him collect his jacket, as she watched him walk to their car, as she watched him drive to the far end of town, she fumed. He had no right to go behind her back, no right to talk to Vick, no right to try to advance her out of their partnership, no right to take away the job she'd wanted so desperately.

Behind the fury, though, there was something else: her subconscious fitting together the pieces to a puzzle that her waking mind had yet to acknowledge. There was something...

The de la Cruz family lived in a trailer park, small, tidy, and close enough to the ocean that Juliet could smell salt. She tucked her upset away and climbed out of the car in unison with Carlton. The woman out front stripped off her gardening gloves and spoke in a rapid burst of Spanish to the teenaged boy lounging on the front desk; he vanished inside, and she started forward to meet them.

"Ms. de la Cruz?" Juliet said, and took off her aviators. At the sight of her face, the woman covered her mouth with a hand and sank to the ground, where she began to sob. She knew; mothers always knew.

"You've got no poker face, O'Hara," Carlton muttered.

"Shut up, Carlton, and for her sake, remember to be sensitive," she shot back. She left him standing by the car and crouched down by de la Cruz. The woman was curled practically into a ball, a tight knot of limbs and tears; Juliet set a hand on her back, and when de la Cruz leaned into her, slid an arm around her shoulders. Her outburst of grief was potent but brief, and within moments her deep shudders had given way to soft heaves, and she pulled herself to her feet. She moved, suddenly, like an old woman, although she couldn't be much older than forty.

"Ms. de la Cruz, I'm Detective Juliet O'Hara with the SBPD. This is my partner, Carlton Lassiter." She hesitated, and then said, "Estarías más cómodo hablando en español?"

"No, Detective, thank you. This is about Josefina? You've found her."

"Yes, ma'am. I'm sorry to tell you that your daughter has passed away. We found her body yesterday."

"I...I don't know what..."

"Ms. de la Cruz, I know this is a hard time for you, but we have a few questions. Do you mind if we come inside?"

"No. Not...no," said de la Cruz, but Juliet had to take her by the arm and lead her inside; pain had rendered her immobile. The son had disappeared into the back. Carlton jerked his head in that direction and then, at Juliet's nod, vanished himself.

"Did Josefina ever talk about strangers approaching her? Any adults she was wary of—teachers, friends of the family?"

"No," de la Cruz said. "No. She was a sweet girl, but shy with people she didn't know. Not many friends. I work long hours, so her brother watches her. Watched her." She bowed her head again, covered her face with her hands; her voice, when she spoke, was thick but audible, and she seemed to find it easier to answer Juliet's questions when she didn't have to look at her.

"She vanished at night?"

"Yes. I stepped out to talk to a neighbor. She was playing out front—I've never thought it was dangerous before. I thought at first she had wandered away. Looking for fireflies, maybe."

"Thank you. My next question is going to be difficult to hear, but I promise you, I'm asking only because we need to eliminate all possibilities. Do you have any affiliation with a gang, or do you know anyone with a gang affiliation?"

"Mother of God, no!"

"Ms. de la Cruz, will you look at me?" Juliet hated this. "Ms. de la Cruz, I need you to look at me now."

The woman raised her face to Juliet.

"Ms. de la Cruz, are you absolutely certain you don't know anything else about your daughter's disappearance?"

"Detective, I know only that my daughter is dead—" 

Carlton reappeared in the doorway, raised an eyebrow, and exited. Time to go, then. "Thank you again, ma'am, and I am so sorry for your loss. Someone from the department will be in touch when we know more." She imitated her partner before the woman fell apart again, but not without leaving her card and the number for a state-provided grief counselor. Carlton was drumming out a beat against the steering wheel; she felt like punching him in his pompous face.

"Anything?" he asked.

"No, she doesn't know more than what she reported. The son?"

He didn't answer until they were out of the trailer park. "Seemed pretty torn up—he was listening at the front door when we told her, guess you saw."

"But?"

"He had a tattoo. Pretty young for that kind of thing."

"Did you recognize it?"

He was silent again until they pulled onto the main drag. "No. No, O'Hara, I didn't recognize it. Let's swing by the station for the coroner's report and plan our next move from there."

"This never gets any easier," said Juliet.

"No," said her partner. "It never does."

-

Woody was still working on identifying the other two victims, but he wasn't entirely without useful information. He had cause of death—starvation and exposure for all three—and something else: something he'd found in Josefina's stomach.

"It's a...ring?" Juliet said.

Carlton turned it over in the plastic bag. "Silver, looks like. Could be a small man's or a large woman's. Woody says it was tangled up with a ball of hair—probably the victim's, but there was a lot of hair there. The setting is unisex."

She leaned over his shoulder and guided his wrist until the ring caught the light. "Is there an inscription on the inside?"

"Yeah, looks like it. Hang on...here we go. 'She will crush your head.' Shit!" He threw the evidence bag down on his desk.

"Carlton, what—?"

"What do you know about Mariology, O'Hara?"

"Not much," she admitted.

"Immaculata refers to the Immaculate Conception, or at least that's what we've postulated. This makes the link pretty damn clear, though. It's a line from the Immaculata prayer. _If it pleases you, use all that I am and have without reserve, wholly to accomplish what was said of you: 'She will crush your head,' and 'You alone have destroyed all heresies in the world.'_ Why the hell was it in the kid's stomach, though?" He picked the ring back up and held it in front of the window. "Who did it belong to?"

"We need to ID the other two victims," she said. "That means combing through more missing persons files and kidnapping reports."

"Yeah," he said. "Yeah. There's one more person I want to talk to first, though."

"Who's that?"

"Old friend from a Sureños outfit. Back to the car, O'Hara—this won't take long."

"You always say that," Juliet said. 

"Am I ever wrong? Don't answer that. Take the ring with you—we'll show it to Julio and see what he had to say."

The second car ride was worse, because it gave Juliet time to be furious with him again, and to feel a tidal wave of guilt for concerning herself with personal matters during her working hours. He was an idiot, no matter how good he smelled—an idiot and a blowhard, and if she wanted to be angry with him, she would do so on her own time.

Carlton drove them to a private high school just outside of one of Santa Barbara's more exclusive enclaves. "Julio agreed to meet us on his lunch break," he explained as he pulled into a STAFF ONLY parking space with total disregard.

"And Julio is your expert on local but growing crime syndicates?"

"I'd hardly call him an _expert_ —but fine, O'Hara, he knows what he's talking about. He ran with Cinco Reyes as a kid. Did some time, got out, works here as an art history teacher now. His uncle was pretty high up in the organization, so he was in the middle of all this crap from the time he was knee-high."

"Uh-huh," Juliet said. It occasionally rankled that they used his contacts more often than hers, but he had been entrenched in the city for far longer, and to be fair, when they went calling on one of her resources he was more than willing to take the backseat. And then there was the matter of this being not only a triple homicide but a suspected gang crime; the Chief had always allowed her head detective unusual leniency in the variety of his cases, although technically his division was serious crimes against persons, and gang activity was something of a special passion of Carlton's.

She matched his pace as he led her down one of the clean, broad halls of Santa Barbara Prep. "Julio" had a classroom at the very end of a hall plastered with student art projects. The man himself was waiting inside; he was both like and unlike what Juliet had expected, with a tall, lean build that reminded her of her partner, thin-rimmed glasses, a neat suit, and just the hint of a circle of ink peeking out from beneath his collar.

"Lassiter," he said. "Haven't seen you for a while. You need someone to solve another crime for you?"

"Why, Zavala, you get tired of teaching those little bastards?"

Julio—Doctor Zavala, rather—grinned as he stood up from behind his desk and offered his hand. "Good to see you, Carlton. This must be Detective O'Hara." His handshake was firm, dry, and polite. "It's a pleasure to finally meet you."

"You as well," said Juliet. "Carlton tells me you might be able to help us identify some evidence."

"I'll do what I can, although I've been out of the loop for a long time. What you got for me, man?"

Carlton reached for the pocket inside his jacket and hesitated. "I don't have to tell you that this is highly confidential—"

Zavala rolled his eyes. "I don't think so."

"Then here." Carlton pulled out the evidence bag and dangled it in front of Zavala. "What can you tell us?"

"It's jewelry," said Zavala.

Her partner scoffed, and Juliet smiled. "I know _that_ ," he said.

"Let me see." Zavala took it and turned it over. "Can I take it out of the bag?"

"It's already been dusted," Juliet said. "Go for it."

He shook it into his hand and carried over to the window. "Silver," he said, but slowly. "Plain, probably for a man, but could be a woman's ring. There's an inscription on the inside, hand-cut." He held it up to the light to read the inside of the band; Juliet could tell when recognition set in, because he jerked upright and almost dropped the ring.

"This isn't Cinco Reyes," he said.

"No," said Carlton.

"Immaculata," he said. "Shit. You know what you're getting into?"

"Not very well," said Carlton, folding his arms over his chest. "I know they're local, small, atypical, but powerful for all that. I know that whoever is in charge of this outfit requires and receives absolute loyalty and secrecy, which is almost unheard of. Everything we have on them comes from other gang members snitching, not from Immaculata guys themselves. I have hearsay connecting them to drug rings, gun smuggling, blackmail, prostitution, car theft, chop shops, and half a dozen other major transgressions, but absolutely no hard evidence. Hell, I can't even name more than three suspected members."

"Not guys," Zavala said, "or not only. They run with a lot of women, you get me? And not only Latinos—all races, even whites. They'll recruit anyone who can keep their mouth shut. My uncle used to fence for them a couple of times, but he cut ties pretty quick. They run a tight ship, and they're ruthless."

At this sour news, Juliet mirrored her partner's defensive posture. "Can you name any names? Or can your uncle?" she asked.

"No, Detective. I never met any of them, and I haven't heard from my uncle in years."

She pressed harder. "Anything connecting them to child prostitution?"

"Good God, is that what this is about?" Zavala sat down on the windowsill. "No, not that I heard. They were big in the drug game back then—not only cocaine and heroine, all kinds of exotic designer cocktails. And, like you said, selling illegal guns."

"Anywhere they used to meet?"

"My uncle used to meet them down by the docks, I think. Wait—he used to have a buddy who used to help him fence stuff. Mark Alvarez. I don't know what happened to him, but he was big with the Five Kings, very tough, very dangerous. Worked with Immaculata's outfit pretty often. He almost definitely has a record."

"Great," Carlton said, and clapped his hands; Zavala tossed the ring to him, and he slid it bag in the evidence bag. "Not much, but at least it's something. Thanks, Julio."

"No problem, man. Don't be a stranger, okay? The wife keeps asking about you."

"Tell her the next time you cook again to invite me over. Maybe I'll even bring O'Hara."

"You do that. Detective O'Hara—a pleasure. If you'll excuse me, I'd better get back to teaching my little bastards." The corner of his mouth twitched, but what Juliet carried out of that room was a deep tide of sadness. 

"He seems like a good man," she said, once they were back in the car.

"Yeah. Best Italian cook I've ever met. Think we should try to track the kids, Alvarez, or the house?"

"The house and Alvarez first," Juliet said. "We still have a couple of business hours left. We'll split the missing persons cases after dinner."

"Sounds like a plan," he said. Back at the station, they commandeered one of the conference rooms and sent a trainee off to gather the files they needed. Juliet took the crime scene, Carlton took Mark Alvarez, and after a solid three hours of staring at a computer screen and placing increasingly long-shot calls to lawyers, real estate agents, banks, and county records offices, she was ready to tear her hair out.

"Ugh," she said, and yanked the clip out of her hair. It caught in a tangle, and she almost yanked out a piece of scalp. "Shoot, I didn't mean that literally—"

"Here, hold still," Carlton said. He was on hold, with the phone tucked against his shoulder, but he fed the cord out and came around the table. "Good lord, O'Hara, do you—yes, hello, this is Detective Carlton Lassiter, SBPD. I have a couple of questions for you." He took the main wad of her hair in one hand and began to tease the clip free with the other, working with surprising gentleness.

Juliet pulled up the website for the Santa Barbara Daily Record and started a new search in their digital archive. The last time the house where they'd found the kids had been sold was eleven years ago, and if she could find a real estate listing, she might be able to get the name and address of the person who paid for the ad. Since half of the people she'd talked to had told her the house was condemned and the other half had given her the name of a woman who was either dead or imaginary, it was worth a shot.

"No," Carlton said, by this point dripping condescension, " _Alvarez_. A-L-V-A-R-E-Z. Yes. Yes. No, I am not a telemarketer! I am a detective. No—what? No, _Gloria_ , I am not going to visit you at the nursing home. Could you please give the phone back to an attendant? No. No! Give the phone back to the damn nurse!"

He unsnarled the last of the hairs from her clip and set it on the table next to her elbow, but otherwise he didn't move; he was still holding her hair, and after a moment he began to comb through the ends. In the reflection of the window, she saw that he wasn't even paying attention to her—rather, he was scowling at the window while the woman who may or may not have been Mark Alvarez's grandmother lambasted him over the phone.

"Yes. Yes, ma'am. I apologize for swearing at you. Would you please give the phone back to the nice nurse? Thank you." He dropped her hair and paced back to his corner; after a further attempt to verify Gloria's relationship with Alvarez, he hung up the phone.

The pieces were all there, if only she could fit them together...

"Hungry enough for an early dinner, O'Hara?"

"Yeah, that sounds good. We never did eat lunch."

"Sandwiches okay?"

"Extra bacon, extra—"

"Pickles, yeah yeah. Want to come with?"

"Nah, I'm going to see if I can't trace the real estate listing."

"Suit yourself. I'll be back in a few." He picked up his jacket and left without putting it on. Instead of continuing her search, Juliet pushed her chair back and finished finger-combing her hair while she eyed the stack of missing persons files waiting for her across the table. She wished she could pass those off on a trainee, too, but the department was going through something of a personnel shortage and most of the younger officers didn't have a whole lot of time to spare. At least Carlton would be splitting the stack with her; during her first couple of years as his partner, he'd fallen into the worst habit of fobbing paperwork off on her, and he'd had a real knack for doing on her date nights, too.

He was back in fifteen minutes with a bag of sandwiches from Snarf's; while he was clearing the table and laying out their spread, she excused herself to use the restroom and change into some more comfortable shoes. One of the aforementioned younger officers—fresh, sharp, and pretty—accosted her on the way back. "Detective O'Hara? Would you and Detective Lassiter like some coffee, or...?"

"I get his coffee," Juliet snapped.

"I—whoa, I apologize. I didn't realize..."

"Oh god, I'm so sorry." She must be tired, to be so sharp with a poor kid who didn't deserve it. "I am so sorry, it's been a really frustrating day. No, but thank you so much for offering. It really isn't your job, though, however much the rest of us try to make you into gophers, I promise."

"Sure thing, Detective, no problem. The Chief mentioned that you guys had that big case."

"We do," Juliet said. She poured a cup of coffee while she talked and dumped in the required three creams and four sugars before starting on a cup for herself. "No breaks yet, though."

"I was one of the first responders," she said. Nadine Young, Juliet remembered, that was her name. When she rubbed at her forehead, Juliet noticed a couple of fresh scrapes against the dark skin of her hand. "It was pretty hard, seeing those kids."

"I have your report. You did good work," Juliet said, and then without hesitation poured a third cup. "How do you take your coffee, Officer Young?"

"I—oh. Thanks, one cream is fine."

"You look like you needed it," Juliet said. "Here you go. Sorry again about snapping, and seriously—don't let any of us push you around."

"Aye aye, Detective," said Young, taking her coffee. She looked just a little bit brighter at that, and Juliet felt a rush of relief as she made her way back to the conference room.

Lassiter had already polished off one of his sandwiches and was starting on a second. "I hope you left me something," she teased; it was hard to remember how angry she'd been earlier in the day, hard to believe that he'd asked for another partner at all. (But the pieces were all there; she was sure of it.) 

"I got five or six," he said around a mouthful of pastrami. His tie was flipped back over his shoulder. "They always give me extras, no idea why. Hey, is that coffee?"

"Nope. Both of these are for me."

"Come on, O'Hara, give it up." He went to snap his fingers at her and apparently thought better of it. "...Please?"

"Since you asked nicely—" She slid his cup across the table and commandeered one of the sandwiches marked "XBAC XPIC" in return. They'd have to interview the person who called in the tip that lead to the discovery, and all the neighbors, and hopefully by then Carlton would've tracked down Alvarez and they could talk to him, too. In the meantime, there were the files.

They finished two and a half more pots of coffee and kept at it well past midnight. It was grueling, emotionally difficult work, and more than once she had to grant herself the reprieve of a few minutes staring at the ceiling to steady her composure. Carlton was worse; after the first couple of hours he got jittery, and every few files he'd stop, pop the magazine out of his Glock, and practice drawing or dry firing his weapon. He eventually settled down, but Juliet knew that only meant he'd locked away whatever parts of himself were still capable of feeling rattled.

At half-past twelve she finally shut off her computer and touched him on the shoulder. He looked up at her, startled, and she said, "You need to get some sleep."

"What time is it?"

"After midnight," she said. "Come on, let's go home. We can pick this back up in the morning."

"Yeah, all right." They locked up what needed to be locked up, and Juliet took the keys from him when he went to open the car.

"You wanna drive?"

"I'll drop you off. If I can manage it, I want to get to the gym tomorrow to lift weights."

"Your choice," he said, and let her take the keys. "I'd rather have the extra hour of sleep myself."

"I won't be able to sleep late anyway," she said, and then cleared her throat.

He only looked at her, gaze clear despite the exhaustion that settled over him like a shroud, and said, "I know you won't."

She dropped him off in front of his house, waited until he was inside and had closed the door behind him, and then drove home. Flower was waiting for her just inside the threshold; the cat trilled a greeting and rubbed against her legs in welcome. Across the room, Flower's brother Thumper hissed and darted to the back.

"Nice to see you too, Thumper," Juliet said. "Hey, Flo, what a good girl. Thumper's secretly happy to see me, isn't he?" Flower purred. She had short, thick fur in a soft gray and a small, neat face, and was the absolute friendliest cat Juliet had ever owned. Thumper, on the other hand, appeared to like only his sister, and tolerated Juliet if she was feeding him; otherwise, he deigned to ignore her.

It was a relief to be home with the door locked behind her and the world on the other side of it. Here there were only her cats, her kitchen, her fluffy slippers, her chairs, her shelves with the volumes of _Gotham Central_ and _Birds of Prey_ lined up next to copies of the Miami and Santa Barbara police codes, her Angels sweatshirt, her leftover takeout and her mountain bike and her drooping but still fragrant wildflowers. She changed into the sweatshirt and a pair of old shorts, fed the cats, and stared out the window while she microwaved a cup of water for chamomile tea.

The pieces were all there.

When the tea was ready, she took it with her into the bathroom to cool while she scrubbed away her makeup and braided her hair back for the night. If she was up at six, she'd have forty-five minutes at the gym; she'd have to shower there if she wanted to get to work early. Flower rolled around in the bathtub while Juliet washed her face; Thumper perched on the vanity, and, when he thought she wasn't looking, stuck a paw in her tea and left a white hair and a piece of cat litter behind.

"Come on, Thumper, not again," she said.

She went to the kitchen, dumped out her tea, rinsed the mug, found her hair clip from that day sitting by the sink—she must've set it there without thinking about it—and, with a yawn that literally made her jaw crack, began to pick that last few hairs from the spring. It was a new clip; her old one had broken, so she'd bought the other one for days when she was too rushed to do anything but pull the whole mess back and not worry about how she looked. Carlton had been sweet to help her untangle it; beneath all the bluster, he had a heart of gold. Maybe he really had meant the request to transfer partners as a compliment, in an admittedly stupid kind of way. 

The pieces were all there—

"No," Juliet said, and then the realization blossomed in her mind, unfurling along her veins in a heady thrum that left her breathless. "No, oh _god_." The pieces were all there and now she saw them, understood the shape and content and fullness of the implications. She was out the door and couldn't remember how she'd gotten there, had to force herself to go back and make sure she'd locked the door, and then she was in the car, and then she was driving to Carlton.

She didn't hesitate until she was standing on his doorstep. The sympatico between them, it wasn't uncommon between partners, but it certainly wasn't typical enough to take for granted. She could ruin everything, _this_ could ruin everything; she felt the sudden rush of standing on the edge of a vast but unseen chasm.

And then she gathered her courage and knocked on the door.

"Hi," she said, when Carlton answered. He looked completely befuddled; he'd obviously already gone to bed, and Juliet didn't care. "Hi," she repeated.

"O'Hara?" he said.

"I'm pretty sure you're in love with me," she said. "And I'm pretty sure that I'm in love with you, too."


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Much love as always to [slybrunette](http://slybrunette.tumblr.com/) and [andthenisay](http://andthenisay.tumblr.com/) for their help! Alas, this is not the chapter in which Lassiter grows a beard. I know, I know.

Her hair was all done up in some kind of fancy braid, and she was wearing an Angels sweatshirt that was more hole than fabric, but she continued to be both solidly his partner and the only woman who had ever shown up on his doorstep at one in the morning to declare that he was in love with her.

"Excuse me?" he said.

"You heard me, Carlton," she said. Her mouth was set, but her eyes were the kind of luminous that indicated gathered tears.

"Uh, maybe you'd better come inside, O'Hara," he managed to get out. It all seemed very probable that this was a dream. Dreaming, that would make sense; hadn't he gone to bed already tonight? Station, O'Hara dropped him off at home, he'd crawled in bed, therefore: dream.

Still, there was a heaviness to seeing her there in his living room, in her ratty sweatshirt and with bare legs. He stared at her, and she stared right back, and an interminable amount of time passed while they stood there gaping like idiots at each other. She finally sat down on his couch, although she almost missed the seat when she let her legs collapse out from under her. 

"Okay," he said. "Okay. O'Hara, I don't know what kind of conclusions you're drawing here, but it's late, you're tired, you're stressed, and you're probably sleepwalking. You can sack out on the couch tonight, and in the morning this will all seem like a bad dream."

"I'm not sleepwalking. Do you think I'm a good detective?"

"Are you sure you aren't sleepwalking?"

"Answer the question."

He scratched his chest for lack of anything better to do with his hands. "Of course I do."

"You think I demonstrate sound reasoning?"

"What the hell is this, O'Hara? All right, fine, yes, you have excellent deductive skills. Is there a reason you needed an impromptu performance evaluation in the middle of the night?"

"Then by your own admission, you trust my conclusions." 

God Almighty, she was relentless. "Yes, O'Hara, I trust your conclusions."

She nodded, and then she said, "Good, because I have conclusive proof that you and I love—no. That you and I are in love with each other." Her face told him that she felt the distinction was significant. "Am I wrong?"

The fight went out of him all at once, and he sat down hard on the other end of the couch. "No," he admitted. "No. Well, I can't speak for your half of the equation, but you aren't completely out of your mind."

"Oh, that's what every woman wants to hear after she bares her heart."

He was finding it difficult to look at her. "Yeah, well, it's not secret that on a personal level, I'm a trainwreck."

"You are not a—yeah, okay. Maybe." It was rarely so easy a sell with O'Hara, though.

Lassiter cleared his throat. "And you're sure that you—"

"I'm sure," she said. "Would it be easier if I wasn't? I mean, don't you..."

What, did she think he was stupid? "Of course I do—want. That. But all things considered, O'Hara, yes, it probably would be easier."

She didn't say anything, and he exerted every last shred of willpower in neither looking at nor reaching for her. Nonetheless, his awareness of her was agony; she was perhaps a foot and a half away, and he could feel the couch shift as she fidgeted. Oh, this was the last thing they needed, other than Spencer sticking his nose into their partnership on a high-profile case.

"Do you really want a different partner?"

"No, O'Hara," he said, weary, "of course I don't want a different partner."

"Then we—Carlton. Carlton, look at me." She shifted again, drawing one of her legs up and turning to face him, and she waited until he stopped glaring at the floor like the yellow-bellied coward he was before she continued; still they didn't touch. "Then we need to talk about this and make a decision we can both live with."

"There's only two choices," he said. Now that he was looking at her, he was finding it difficult to blink. She was cute—impish, even—rather than traditionally beautiful, with the most fascinatingly mobile face and a remarkable knowledge of modern firearms; she was tough, far tougher than he was, sweet, staggeringly competent, funny and warm and terrifying, and for that reason there was really only _one_ choice.

"Either we stop working together, and start dating," she said, "or we keep working together, and we don't..."

"We keep it professional," he said. "Think about it, O'Hara. We're good—no, we are _great_ at our jobs, we work like a well-oiled machine, and we get to see each other every damn day. What if we do give that up? There's absolutely no guarantee you and I would work out on a personal level. Worst case scenario, we put in for a transfer, go through all the proper channels, start going out six months later, and find out that there's no spark whatsoever."

"No spark?" she said.

"No spark," he agreed, although his gaze had dropped to her lips; the only light in the room came from one muted lamp, but her lips and teeth and tongue still worked in a fascinating concert as she spoke.

"If you say so, Carlton." That was her _you moron_ tone, the one she used when she was humoring him.

"And even if we do follow protocol"—was that his voice?—"your career and mine are going to be cast into a new light. I'm technically a superior—and then there's the age difference, O'Hara—"

"I don't care about any of that," she said, and he could tell she didn't—knew that if anyone could weather the storm of blackened reputation, it was his partner. "But I don't think I could..."

"Could what?"

"I like working with you," she said. "No, not just working with you—I like being your partner. I like solving crimes and catching bad guys and drinking terrible coffee and driving out to interview witnesses with you, and that's great, and you know what? This sucks. It sucks, but I _need_ to be the one out there watching your back. I need that to be me."

"Then that's our answer," he said. 

She glanced down, and then away, tugging the overlong sleeves of her sweatshirt down to cover her fingers. "So what do we do now?"

"Nothing," Lassiter said. "We do nothing. Whatever we said here, we forget it, and we carry on exactly like we always have. Come on, O'Hara, chin up—"

"It's not that easy."

"No. No, probably not."

And then her shoulders straightened, and her chin did come up, and she tilted her head at the precise angle that let her breathe into his mouth.

"Can't we—?" she said. "Just one time—"

Had they moved closer? Oh Christ, she was _right there_ , and he could feel the heat of her. There was a dark smudge under one of her eyes, like she'd taken her make-up off while already half-asleep. It would be the easiest thing in the world to say yes, the easiest thing into the world to touch her, the easiest thing in the world to let themselves have the memory of one night to sustain them.

But O'Hara was a damn fine cop.

"We can't," he said. He hoped she'd back off first, wasn't sure he could. "You know we can't, Jul—O'Hara. _Detective_."

She jerked away from him, and he hated it. "You're right," she said. "I apologize, that was—inappropriate." She stood up, smoothed her hair, collected her keys from the coffee table, and then came back to gather the slippers he hadn't noticed her shove under the couch. She'd come over here in her slippers; it must have hit her all at once, right between the eyes. 

She put herself back together, and when she faced him again, it was with clear eyes and a set face, back straight, no flicker of hesitation, just that cool regard. "Thank you, Carlton. And I'm sorry to have—"

"Don't you dare apologize," he said. Funny; he hadn't meant to say that. "Just...drive safe, O'Hara."

"Will do," she said. "Partner."

After she left, he felt tired and old, older than he'd ever felt in his life. He went to bed, and didn't sleep; he was out the door again before dawn, running for the shore, trying to tire himself out before the day even started.

-

He'd forgotten that she'd promised to pick him up in the morning, but when he came out of the house at seven, she was there, idling by the curb. He put his sunglasses on as soon as he was in the car even though it was overcast, just so she wouldn't be able to tell he was having trouble making direct eye contact.

"Lassiter—" she said, and then pulled a face. "Ugh, no, I can't do that. Carlton. Don't be an idiot."

"I resent that remark," he shot back. Combative was good. Combative was great. He could do combative. Combative made it much harder to remember that last night she'd said she was ass-over-heels for him.

"You resemble that remark. It's going to rain today, take off your sunglasses and act like an adult."

"Whoa, O'Hara. I'm not the one trying to pick a fight before the first coffee break of the day."

She frowned at him through the next stoplight. "All right, let's make a deal," she finally said. "You stop acting like an idiot and I'll stop acting like the Hulk and we'll solve this stupid crime and move to Florida and get married and have two kids."

There was a beat. Lassiter swallowed. "Upper Florida?" he asked.

"Please, we might as well live in Georgia."

"I don't see why we'd move to Florida anyway, unless it's for the concealed carry laws. Weather's just as good here, O'Hara."

"Fine, we'll move to Arizona."

He thought about that for a couple of minutes and said, "Sedona's nice."

"Your face is nice," she retorted, still furious, and Lassiter decided that no, combative was not helping with the situation at all. By the time they reached the station, O'Hara was driving like she was the stunt woman in a movie; she made a precision turn into the parking lot, floored it into the space, and slid to a halt just in time to save them from going into the grass.

As he watched, she folded her hands over the steering wheel and brought her forehead down to meet them; her shoulders jerked, but only once.

"O'Hara?"

"I need just a moment," she said, voice muffled, "to lock this down, and then we are going to pretend nothing ever happened."

"Right," he said. There wasn't much else he could do; he didn't want to leave her alone in the car, but he doubted rubbing her back was really going to help the situation, not when comfort offered in either direction would probably make him curl up and sob into the steering wheel himself. He didn't have a handbook for this, and somehow he didn't think Google would offer many solutions for "how to fall out of love with your partner." Not exactly the kind of thing you could take to a department therapist, either. Nothing in his experience with Victoria or any other woman—nothing in his _life_ —had prepared him for this.

Things with Victoria hadn't been easy, exactly, but they'd met, they'd hit it off, they'd both wanted to get married, they'd gotten married. There was no friendship there, nor the working relationship he'd built up with O'Hara, although compared to his fling with Barry the marriage to Victoria had been a walk in the park—actually, now that he thought about it, "trainwreck" looked like an understatement when it came to his history. With O'Hara, though, there was no pride tied up in his decision, no desperation. He liked her, and he respected her, and he wasn't going to risk what they had for what they couldn't have. End of story.

"All right, O'Hara?" he said.

She sat upright, unclenched her hands, and said. "Fine, Carlton. Now about those interviews—"

"I put out a couple of calls about Alvarez that might turn something up today. We'll start with the neighbors."

"Let me grab the reports, I think Young put together a list of everyone in the area. If we can, we should start with the person who made the call."

"What, the girl?"

"She's nineteen, and yes."

"Think she knows more than she's letting on?"

She shrugged and swung out of the car. "I doubt it," she said across the roof, "but she sounded scared stiff on the call recording."

"Most people are the first time they call 911. Doesn't necessarily mean anything."

"Well, that's what we're going to find out." She started up the steps at a clip—how the hell she managed to navigate in those shoes he didn't know, except that it spoke well of her coordination—and he followed her, pulling open the door in time for her to slip inside. Vick arrived soon after, and they went over their brief with her before collecting the necessary documentation and driving back to the crime scene. 

"Park here?" Lassiter asked.

"That's fine, Annie Hua lives a block north."

"We know anything about her?"

"She's not a suspect, Carlton," O'Hara said, all tolerance, but then she smiled at him with such a simple, unadorned pleasure that he couldn't help but smile back. He probably looked like a moron.

"I put out an APB on Immaculata," he said, with the tenderness of a husband reading love poetry to his wife.

"I asked for a rush on Woody's tox screenings," she answered. 

"Good call." It started to drizzle.

"We should—"

"Right," he said. "Umbrella?"

O'Hara glanced up and then shook her head. "Nah, we'll chance it."

The street was vacant, almost eerily so—no kids running around, only a couple of parked cars on the street. Of course, it was the middle of the day, when good, upstanding citizens should be at work, but a couple of the houses they passed had broken windows, and one was even boarded up with a "CONDEMNED" sign out front. O'Hara's heels tapped out a staccato, uneven rhythm on the cracking concrete as they set out.

The crime scene was at the corner of the block; Hua lived in a basement apartment on the block's other side, pretty close if you cut didn't mind cutting through a couple of backyards, a little further if you took the sidewalk and it was starting to spit rain. O'Hara knocked on the door, introduced them, and asked if they could come inside and ask a few questions.

Hua took them to the card table in her kitchen and offered O'Hara the other chair; Lassiter stood just out of her line of sight and tried to be subtle about his snooping. Hua was a tall, gangling woman barely out of girlhood; she lived alone, and probably afforded the rent because this was the kind of neighborhood that taught you fast to lock your car doors. Worked at a local fast food joint (there was an apron hanging from a nail beside the door), studied at Santa Barbara Community College (textbooks on the card table, an SBCC lanyard attached to the keys hanging by the apron), involved in theater as an extra-curricular. Single, probably, or in a long-term relationship; there were dishes piled in her sink, but no signs of a regular male visitor.

Despite the mostly bare walls, she'd done what she could to decorate with scavenged knicknacks. There were a couple of homemade wall hangings she'd put together out of ribbons, clothespins, and postcards, and in one corner she had a statue of Mary sitting on a particle-board end table. The statue was chipped, but someone had repainted it—recently, going by the smell. She'd tacked up a couple of pictures of her family in the kitchen, too.

"—was it that made you suspicious?" O'Hara was saying.

"There were always cars there, you know? Lots of cars, except sometimes everyone would leave all at once. The lights would go on in the middle of the night..." Hua's body language was uncomfortable, although it was hard to tell if she was experiencing the general hesitance some people displayed around authorities or if she was occupied with a more specific worry. "I just had a weird feeling."

"Is that all? I'm sorry, Annie, I'm not trying to pressure you, it's just important that we understand what happened here." She had solid instincts, did O'Hara, and she knew how to press a witness while appearing to back off.

"I saw—um." Hua looked away again, down and to the left. "One day I saw them drag a little kid inside by his arm. He was crying—the kid—really crying. He was so loud. They were pulling him kind of rough? I'm sorry, I know I should have called the police right after I saw that, but they weren't hitting him, and I thought maybe he just..."

"Didn't want to listen to his parents?" O'Hara suggested. "You didn't do anything wrong, Annie."

"Did you find him?" Hua said. "I mean, I didn't see anything on the news, but you must have found something or you wouldn't be here."

"We're still investigating a number of leads," Lassiter cut in.

"There really isn't much we can tell you at this point. We'll be in touch if we find out anything important," said O'Hara.

"Thanks," Hua said. "I...that little boy. It would be nice to know he's okay." She was hugging herself, looking at the statue of the Virgin, the very picture of penitence. Penitent for what?

O'Hara made their excuses, prodded Lassiter to offer a handshake, and then led him out the door. They were ten or twenty yards away before she said, "What do you think?"

"I don't trust her," he said.

"Carlton! You don't trust anyone."

"Nope, and look where it's gotten me," he said. "She was lying about something, though. Something with the kid..."

"She didn't want to admit that she didn't call the police as soon as she saw them mistreat the boy."

"Maybe." It was starting to do more than spit now; they'd need the umbrellas. He wondered what O'Hara looked like soaked through, and then eliminated that thought with extreme prejudice. "She couldn't tell you anything else about the residents?"

"She said there were too many people for her to remember any of them specifically."

"Men?"

"And women."

"Race?"

"White, black, Latino." O'Hara shrugged. "Who knows? I doubt she was paying that much attention."

"You know that only confirms was Zavala said."

"I do," she said. They were back at the car; he popped the trunk, and O'Hara pulled out their umbrellas and passed him one. "Split up?" she asked.

"I guess we'd better."

They divided the street and went up and down it, knocking on doors, talking to residents, making note of the street numbers of the houses where nobody answered. At the end of the row they met and pooled their findings.

"Nothing," he said.

"Nothing," said O'Hara. "Oh, except the lady in 1103 says that her dog went missing two months ago. Lots of cars, lots of people. Nobody else remembers seeing kids, though."

"Damn it! So we have an abandoned house owned by an imaginary person with three dead kids, only one of whom we can identify?"

"Yes," O'Hara said. "Yes, that's what we have."

He flung open the car door, tossed his umbrella in the backseat like an Olympian throwing a javelin, swung inside, and closed the door again with enough force to rock the whole car. As soon as O'Hara has fastened her seatbelt, he peeled away.

After a couple of blocks, she said, "I have a question. It doesn't have anything to do with the case."

"Good," he bit out.

"Although with the mood you're in, Carlton, I think I'd be better off making a face-to-face inquiry with a bear."

"Ask, O'Hara."

She let him stew for a few more blocks and then said, "Did it occur to you to lie to me last night?"

"You're going to have to clarify."

"Did it occur to you to lie and say that you weren't—you know. With me."

"Oh." He turned onto the main drag and reached out to adjust the wipers. Great fat drops of rain were splattering against the windshield, and the interior was fogging up to reveal a couple of streaks that he'd missed the last time he'd cleaned the windows. "Yeah, for about thirty seconds."

O'Hara had her hand braced on the oh-shit bar above her head and was looking out her side of the car; when she talked, she spoke to the glass. Her mood in that moment was such a strong contrast to the woman who'd gone toe-to-toe with him her first day on the job, rookie though she was, that he felt responsible, even though he knew she was as despondent about the case as she was about any personal matters.

"Why didn't you?" she asked.

"I—" Now there was a good question. His damn therapist was always on his ass with questions like that, all "What motivated you, Detective?" and "Why did you make that particular decision, Detective?" There was never an easy answer though, never one unifying reason that cut through the layers of complexity; Lassiter was not a man of perfect clarity.

"We're partners, O'Hara," is what he finally settled on. "And we've never lied to each other before, have we?"

"Thank you," she said.

"For what?"

"For respecting me enough to be honest," she said.

He spent the next red light looking her over; while she'd looked distraught this morning and had vacillated between giddy and solemn the rest of the day, now she only looked weary. He wished there was some covert way he could comfort her—grab her a cup of coffee, maybe, or make sure her colored pencils were all sharpened. (He'd laughed at those colored pencils the first time she'd pulled them out and hand-written a chart of relevant information, but she'd filled in the "TOP SUSPECT" square with the name of the man who was later convicted as the killer, and then he'd stopped laughing.)

"What about Alvarez?" she said, at least partly to distract him.

"Did some time in the state pen, released three years ago on parole, vanished the day after his last parole hearing. He had battery, armed robbery, and auto theft on his record. His parole officer thinks he's down in San Diego." Although—it occurred to him that he didn't _have_ to be covert anymore. She knew, didn't she? "I made a couple of calls to some contacts down that way, but slim chance that we'll ever get our hands on him, much less get him to inform."

"Maybe we're working the wrong—Carlton? Where are we going?"

He spun the wheel and swerved into a passing Starbucks, instructed O'Hara to wait in the car, and was back in a couple of minutes.

"Here," he said, and shoved the green tea frappuccino and croissant into her hands. 

She seemed astonished. "Carlton, what—how do you even know I—"

"I ran into you and your friend that one time. What's her name?"

"Valeria?"

"Yeah, her. How's her nose, by the way?"

"It popped right back into place!" O'Hara said, indignant.

"Sure it did. Mine, too. Does hers change direction three times now? 'Aqualine' is what they always said. Hah, I'll show them aqualine. Quit gaping and eat your croissant, O'Hara."

She tore a piece off and popped it into her mouth, chewed, swallowed. "Did you just buy food to make me _feel_ better?"

"No. What were you saying about Alvarez again?"

"You did. You just openly bought me comfort food."

"I bring you sandwiches for dinner," he pointed out. Even to his own ears, it sounded like a weak argument.

"That's different," she said. "...Or maybe not."

"I don't want to talk about this anymore."

"Okay." She tore another piece from her croissant and offered it to him. He eyed it suspiciously, but she only arched her brows and shoved it towards him again, so he took it and ate it. Might as well, he'd paid for the thing.

"What about the hair Woody found in the girl's stomach?"

Croissant finished, Lassiter resumed the drive back to the station. "Still waiting for results."

"Rape kits?" she said.

"Only do any good if we have a sample to compare them against."

"I guess we should take a break while we wait to hear from the lab. I have that assault from Shoreline Park to finish, and there's the Dietrich case, although if that isn't a suicide I'll be surprised. God, I wish I didn't say stuff like that. Do you ever feel like this job changes you? I mean it does, obviously, all the things we see, but do you ever feel like it...twists something inside of you?"

"O'Hara—" Jesus, today was a roller coaster for both of them. _This_ was why it was a bad idea to fall for your partner, not that he'd had any choice about it—nor, apparently, had she—and in the aftermath of all those years of trying not to notice the way she always finished her fights, trying not to pay attention to the way her hair smelled, they were both rocketing between the highs of that recent mutual admission and the lows of reality. Right now he wanted to unbuckle her seatbelt, pull her into his lap, and find out if she tasted as deliciously fragrant as she smelled, he wanted to ask her why she'd decided to become a detective, he wanted to be having this conversation in bed on a lazy Sunday morning after they'd woken up together.

He'd liked being married, and suspected he'd like it even more if he was married to O'Hara. He wondered if she felt the same. It was a completely obtuse notion, of course, and O'Hara was right: they needed to lock it down before either of them got even more out of hand. Maybe he'd take a day or two of leave and go fishing. (O'Hara liked hiking and spending time in the woods; he wondered how she felt about fishing, and then reminded himself that he wasn't allowed to wonder about that kind of thing, and then decided that it was fine for partners to have a friendly interest in each others' hobbies—)

"Carlton? Carlton! Fall asleep at the wheel?"

"Sorry," he said. "Yes, I know what you mean, and no, O'Hara, I don't think you have anything to worry about."

"Really?"

"Really. Not because you're incorruptible or any of that crap, but because you care about not letting it twist you. You work against it. You let yourself hope. You'll be fine."

"I—thanks," she said. "Thank you."

"Sure thing."

"And Carlton?"

"Yes?"

"You don't have anything to worry about either," she said.

Oh, Christ. One way or another, this was all going to end in disaster.

-

The days wore on. They went to work, they solved crimes, they went home. The de la Cruz homicides hung over their heads like an oncoming tropical storm. They went to work, and they talked about work, and they made oblique reference but never outright mention of certain reciprocations. Lassiter went to his monthly therapy session and spent the bulk of it staring at the butterfly prints above his counselor's head in stony silence. 

Saturday night he was sitting on his couch, drinking beer, flipping through both _The Killer Angels_ and television channels without any real focus, when his phone vibrated.

_Bored. How was your day?_

Good God, he _hated_ text messages. They made possible long-distance small talk and only encouraged inane chatter. 

_Don't text me,_ he wrote back.

_Don't be a grouch, Carlton._ His phone pinged again almost immediately: _See, this is the kind of thing partners do. They share._

_I'd rather polka with Mike Scioscia than engage in some kind of misguided sharing session,_ he shot back. 

_They announced the dates for the Freeway Series! We're going to win one for the Cowboy._

_Sure, O'Hara. Maybe your delusions will keep you warm at night._ He hesitated, and then tapped out, _Day was fine. Got up early, went for a run out at the Front Country, did some laundry. What does Vick have against the seven-day work week?_

_Flirt. I thought that mudslide took out part of FCT? We can't all be workaholics like you._

Lassiter scoffed. "Oh, come on, like you're fooling anyone." _You're one to talk. What time did you leave yesterday? Eight? Nine?_

_I had paperwork! It's a valid reason to stay late!!! Hey, Grease is on ABC._

He flipped over in time to see Sandy skip across the courtyard as she sang about summer nights. While he rarely copped to it, he had something of a weakness for musicals. Even terrible ones, apparently. _Have you ever seen the sequel?_

_NOT THAT I WOULD EVER ADMIT IT but if I had, I would find it the worst possible combination of horrible and eighties._

_Yeah, I don't know what they were thinking. Michelle Pfeiffer was wasted in that thing._

He finished off his beer and went to get another one, returning _The Killer Angels_ to its shelf on the way. When he came back, O'Hara had written, _Michelle Pfeiffer is never wasted. I'll never forget the first time as saw her as Catwoman. I spent two years wanting to be a cat thief when I grew up._

_You're halfway there. You have the crazy cat lady part down, at least._

_It sounds like you want to talk about how you sneaked off to pet the Singh's dog last week after the hearing, is that what I'm getting?_

_It behooves an officer of the law to maintain positive relations with legal representatives._

_And their pets, apparently. You are the only person I know who would use 'behoove' in a text,_ she said. _Oh, Greased Lightning!_

_Seriously, O'Hara, this song is your favorite?_

_Nope, I like Hopelessly Devoted to You, even if it is award bait. You?_

_Don't have a favorite. Still concerned that these idiots thought Olivia Newton-John looked like a teenager._

_She's fine until they end, but when they take her out of the bobby socks, she looks like a thirty-something. Not a bad-looking thirty-something, but DEFINITELY not a high schooler._

Lassiter dug his shoulders back and forth and settled into the groove in his couch. His feet were propped up on the coffee table, and he wondered how O'Hara would sit if she were there—if she liked to slouch, like he did, or if she'd curl up and tuck her legs underneath her, or if she'd like to lean against him and put her head on his shoulder.

_Just had a thought_ , she wrote.

"Me, too," said Lassiter.

_What if we went around to local schools with our autopsy photos of John & Jane Doe?_

_We can't assume that they're all local just because one of them was,_ he wrote back. _De la Cruz might be the exception._

_Then let's work off that assumption just for now. We don't have anything else to go on._

_I didn't say it was a bad idea. Monday?_

_Monday,_ she said. _In non-work news, I have a confession._

_What's that?_

She didn't respond right away, which told him that either that one cat of hers had gotten into trouble or that she was hesitant about answering.

_I really want to call you right now._

He had his thumb on the button to dial her when another message popped up. _But I know it's a bad idea._

There weren't words strong enough, he thought, a touch wryly. _It is. We should be talking about work, if we're going to talk like this at all._

This time she hesitated long enough that he thought she'd given up and gone to bed, but by the time Sandy had finished dancing the Hand Jive, she'd written back, _Then let's talk about work._

_There's another angle,_ he said. _If this was commercial rather than a kidnapper working in isolation, they had to be getting clients somewhere._

_We have multiple DNA samples_ , she shot back. _This one just one man or even a small group. Somebody used these kids up._

She had grit; it was his favorite thing about her. _We could set up an undercover sting. Have someone pose as a john, see if anyone approaches him._

_You?_

God, he hoped not. _Maybe._

_No, you're crap at undercover work anyway. We'll save that as plan B._

_I don't like it, either._

_We could publicize the photos, see if anyone comes forward._

_At very least, we'll start circulating them through other national law enforcement agencies. My gut still says local._

_Your gut wanted to charge the Deputy Mayor's son as an adult offender for spray-painting his neighbor's mailbox,_ she said.

_You have to crack down hard on kids his age,_ Lassiter wrote back. _Trust me._

He'd meant it as a throwaway line, but she answered, _You know I do._

Yeah, he did. _Not work,_ he said. _Good night, O'Hara._

_I know what you're doing,_ she sent. _Night, Carlton. See you Monday._

"You, too," he said, and then he turned his phone off, and when that didn't work, took it outside and locked it in his car. It would be there in the morning. Probably.

-

They spent the morning of the promised "Monday" working a burglary case with Spencer; the asshat grated on Lassiter far worse than he normally did. Under oath, Lassiter might— _might_ —be willing to admit that he found Spencer's deductive skills incredible and his well-hidden but undeniable bravery admirable, but that handful of good qualities came wrapped in packaging that was outright obnoxious.

"Where are you guys going?" Spencer called from the station steps.

"Away from you!" Lassiter shouted, without turning around.

"Ha ha, really! I mean it! Jules!"

His partner swiveled and walked backwards; he nudged her when she started to veer into traffic. "We have another case, Shawn! I'll call you tomorrow and we'll follow up on this, okay?"

"Sure thing, see you then!" the idiot yelled back.

"Why didn't he fight it?" Lassiter said. "He never gives up that fast."

"You don't have to treat him like he's a complete moron," O'Hara said. "He is capable of picking up on how prickly you are today."

"Prickly? I am not 'prickly,' and I'll thank you not to cast aspersions on my person. Hey—wait, where are you going?"

Instead of climbing into her side of the car, she leaned in, pointed a finger at him, and instructed, "Wait here." She was back a couple of minutes later with a paper coffee cup and a donut wrapped in a napkin.

"Here," she said. "Drink this."

He popped the lid off to make sure she'd gotten the cream-to-sugar ratio correct—she had—and swallowed half of it although it was still piping hot.

"Now that I've brought you comfort food, are you going to act like an actual human being?" O'Hara said.

He glared at her over the rim of the coffee cup and briefly considered asking if "Hopelessly Devoted to You" was really her favorite song out of that pile of nonetheless enjoyable crap. "I am a human being."

"Eat your donut, Carlton," she said.

He brooded angrily while he ate the donut—although O'Hara's face said she thought he was sulking, he _knew_ what she was thinking—and watched her screw around with the radio. The presets were programmed to talk, oldies, a country station they couldn't figure out how to remove, and the soft rock radio band that was O'Hara's favorite. One of the empty cup holders had a couple of loose earplugs and her lip gloss; the earplugs were his, he was pretty sure, and he thought darkly that she'd better not have gotten any of that lip crap on them.

He did feel better when he'd finished the donut, though.

"Thanks," he said.

"You shouldn't let your blood sugar get low, it makes you irritable."

"Irritability is one of my charming personality traits."

"Sometimes it is, and sometimes you're grumpy because you haven't eaten in three hours."

"I'm going to drive now."

"Hey," she said, "I'm not stopping you."

He threw the car into gear and pulled out of the parking lot, checking the rearview as he did to make sure Spencer wasn't following them on his bike. No Spencer in sight; good.

Their first stop was a far cry from the prep school where Julio Zavala taught; instead, it was a squat cinderblock of a building that housed a public middle school, grades five through eight. O'Hara had the manila envelope with the victims' photos tucked under one arm.

"We're not showing these until we have to," she said. "First we ask if they've had any long-term unexcused absences, then we start talking autopsies. Do not bully the teachers. Do not bully the students. No bullying, got it?"

Lassiter picked a fleck of glaze off his tie. "You do the talking. I follow, O'Hara."

"Good," she said, and then she stepped up on the curb and hesitated. "You missed a piece," she added.

He frowned down at his shirtfront. "Where?"

She stuck the corner of the envelope in her mouth, took his tie in one hand, and removed a couple of crumbs with the other. "There," she said.

"Thanks."

"No problem," she said. Between her stilt-like shoes and the gradient between the road and the curb, she was nearly at eye-level. Her hair was starting to escape its confines again, and she was developing little lines at the corners of her mouth—laugh lines, he hoped.

"School," he managed.

"...Right." She pulled herself away and beat a march to the door; he stole another second to marvel at his own personal miracle, and then hurried to catch up.

The secretary in front, a harassed man juggling half a dozen phone calls as he signed them in, passed them off to the guidance counselor as soon as possible. The guidance counselor passed them to another guidance counselor. By the time they'd worked their way up to an assistant principal, Lassiter shoved his badge in the woman's face, barked out his credentials, and demanded to speak to the principal. 

He shot a look at O'Hara that said, _See?_ as they were ushered to the principal's office. She wrinkled her nose at him.

"Detectives. How can I help you?" The principal was an older, brown-skinned woman, even smaller than O'Hara, with cropped gray hair and the carriage of a four-star general. There was chalk dust on the front of her blazer; no wonder she didn't have time to talk, if she was having to substitute in classes herself.

"Principal Harper, it's nice to meet you," O'Hara said, and shook the woman's hand. "I'm Juliet O'Hara and this is Carlton Lassiter, my partner. We need just a few minutes of your time—I promise we won't take long."

"Sure," Harper said. "Come on in, sorry it's such a mess—" There were stacks of papers and books on every flat surface and most of the not-so-flat ones, including the seat of one of the two guest chairs. He let O'Hara take the empty one, shoved his hands into his pockets, and took up a post behind her.

"We're wondering if you have any students with long-term unexcused absences," O'Hara said. "Latino male, white female, out for most of this month, maybe longer."

Harper snorted. "We have more long-term unexcused absences than we do physically present students on some days, Detective. You have to give me a little more to go on." 

"We have pictures," said O'Hara. "They're post-mortem, though."

Harper closed her eyes and sighed, not in exasperation but rather in sadness. "That's fine, Detective. I've probably seen worse. Do you know how old—?"

"They're both eleven or twelve." O'Hara shook the pictures out of the envelope and passed the stack over. "We don't know that they're local, but they were found with a third girl from the area."

"And you haven't matched them to a missing persons report?"

"No," said O'Hara.

"So you thought you'd start in the low-income areas, is that it?"

Oh, were they trying to make O'Hara uncomfortable now? Lassiter was ready to go for the throat when O'Hara shot a warning glance over her shoulder. "Not at all, Doctor Harper, but this is the closest school to the crime scene with students of the right age."

"Mmph," Harper said. "No, I don't know the boy. The girl, though—that might be Opie Reinkens. Her teacher would know for sure."

"May we speak with him or her?"

"Of course. She has—let me think—I believe she's in a planning period right now. I can walk you to her classroom, but after that I'll have to excuse myself."

They followed Harper out of the office to a nearby classroom with a door that was more chip than paint. "Thank you so much," O'Hara said.

There was an expectant silence, and then her elbow met his ribcage. "Uh, thanks," Lassiter chimed in. "We appreciate the help."

"I would say it was my pleasure, but that would be a lie. I hope you catch whoever did this," Harper said.

Lassiter whistled under his breath as they watched her walk away. "Bet the kids here never get away with anything."

"I liked her," said O'Hara.

"You like everyone," he said. "Come on."

The teacher took one look at the photographs and burst into tears. Lassiter patted her on the shoulder and offered the wrinkled but clean handkerchief he'd had in a pocket; O'Hara looked like she was wondering what kind of person carried around a handkerchief in this day and age. _Came with the suit,_ he mouthed over the top of the distraught teacher's head.

O'Hara rolled her eyes so hard he could hear them grind in their sockets and guided the teacher's head to her own shoulder. Eventually, the woman calmed down enough to confirm that Jane Doe was actually Hope "Opie" Reinkens. Lassiter told her to keep the handkerchief and escaped to the front office, where he harrowed the secretary into putting his calls on hold long enough to fetch the appropriate school records.

"You know, Carlton, someday you're going to meet someone who doesn't jump when you shove your badge in their face," O'Hara said from his side.

"I've met plenty of people like that. You, for one," he pointed out.

"After this we should—" O'Hara's phone went off. She frowned and extracted it from inside her suit jacket, held up a finger to quiet him; as she listened to the caller, her frown deepened.

"Vick," she said. "Double homicide at a gas station, suspected pushers—they found smack at the scene. She wants us there ASAP."

He tossed her the keys, already moving in search of the secretary. "Go get the car, I'll meet you around front."

"Got it, see you there," she said.

The secretary was down the hall with his head buried in a file cabinet. "This the right folder?" Lassiter barked, taking it right out of his hands, and then said, "Never  
mind, I see her name. We'll be in touch!"

He barrelled back outside; O'Hara had the car running and was adjusting the rearview when he flung himself inside. "What's the situation?"

"Cashier and one known associate, both killed in the last forty minutes. The gas station was empty, some customer went inside to buy a soda, found them dead, and called it in." She was fiddling with the seat controls as she drove. "Argh, why doesn't this car have preset seat positions? The weird thing, the thing that had Vick worked up, is how they were killed."

"What, not gunshot—?"

"Oh, they were shot. Once in each wrist, once in each foot. If the shock didn't kill them, they would've bled out in a couple of minutes. Hang on, almost there." They took a hard right into a Mobile station; Lassiter flung the file in the backseat and was out of the car before O'Hara threw it into park. He found McNab was playing host to a flock of reporters in the parking lot.

"McNab! Get these morons away from my crime scene!" Lassiter ducked under the yellow tape. "Where's the techs? And who the hell called the press?"

"The witness," O'Hara said. "Look, I think that's him—" She pointed to a short man in a canary-colored polo. 

"Screw it," Lassiter said, and shoved his way through the beat officers standing around like tourists at the entrance; O'Hara followed in his wake. "Why are you all standing here like spectators at a rodeo? Move!" He shoved his hand inside a latex glove and pulled the door open in one movement, and then saw all at once what had the officers so riveted.

There was a dead body spread-eagled on the floor, all right, with four gunshot wounds in the pattern O'Hara had described, but that wasn't what was remarkable.

"Carlton?" O'Hara said. "What's going on?"

She wouldn't be able to see over his shoulder, he realized, and said, a little numbly, "I think we finally have something to go on."

"What—?"

"Gang crime. Our old pals. See for yourself." He stepped aside to let her take in the letters spray-painted on the cheap white tiling beside the first victim's head: _HER GRACE BY FAITH AND DEAD_.

"Oh God," said O'Hara.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If I'm ever trapped in a barn with a horde of zombies outside, no ammo, and no hope, [slybrunette](http://slybrunette.tumblr.com/) and [andthenisay](http://andthenisay.tumblr.com/) will be the big damn heroes who make sure my final screams are grammatically correct.
> 
> Did I mention how much police procedure I made up for this? All of it. All of it is how much I made up.

Carlton was angry.

He was making an effort to bite back his temper, and from what Juliet could gather he genuinely liked his contact in L.A.—someone named "Kekoa"—but she could tell he didn't like what Kekoa was telling him. Small wonder; they were elbow deep in homicides that may or may not have to do with a street gang that functioned like a covert ops organization.

"Uh-huh," he said. "Yeah. Damn right I don't want to hear that, but I appreciate the help." A pause, and then he snorted. "You've been threatening to transfer for years. I'll put in a word with Karen Vick if you ever decide to get off your ass. Sure, thanks again." He hung up.

She leaned back against his desk, crossed her arms, and arched an eyebrow. "Well?"

"That," he said, "was Leilani Kekoa, of the LAPD Major Crimes Unit. She's sending us everything she has on Immaculata, but in her opinion, yes, both of our crimes are absolutely their work."

"And?"

"And..." He leaned back in his chair and looked past her, staring out the window without seeing. "And she says she has reason to suspect that the head of Immaculata is operating out of Santa Barbara."

"They aren't a prison gang?"

"We don't know," Carlton said. "But if they have a presence in prisons, they've hidden it well. It's possible they have ties to other groups—act as a kind of feeder, whatever—but the racial mixing, that's what stands out. Kekoa says the gas station murders were probably an initiation or some kind of effort to rise through the ranks."

"Okay, we suspect the vics were sellers, but we don't know that they have gang ties—"

"Doesn't matter."

"Because Immaculata would've seen them as infringing on their territory either way?"

He grunted. "Probably."

Juliet looked down and realized she had dropped her therapeutic ball on his desk; she picked it up and started squeezing it with her left hand. Squeeze—release—squeeze—release—

Carlton stood up. "Come on," he said. "There's someone I want to talk to again."

"We have a meeting in forty-five minutes! Carlton—Carlton, come back here—"

"We'll be back by then," he barked. "Move it, O'Hara!"

She switched the ball to her right hand and started counting down from fifty again. Carlton made it out the station door without realizing she hadn't followed; she wondered if he'd gotten all the way to the car. Probably not, since he was back inside in a matter of seconds rather than minutes.

"O'Hara?" His brow creased in confusion. He hadn't pulled on his jacket yet; Juliet was not at all swayed by how his shoulder rig emphasized the breadth of his chest.

"Yes, Carlton?"

"Would you—" He stopped, shut his eyes, took a deep breath, and resumed speaking in a less grinding tone. "Would you please come to the car with me so we can go talk to Annie Hua again?"

"Sure thing, Carlton," she said, and hopped off his desk. She took the ball with her; she hadn't bought it to help with stress, but the release was a nice side effect.

"You don't know that she's home right now," she said, once they were in the car.

"No, but I do have her schedules from her school and workplace," he said. "And I know for a fact she—O'Hara, for the love of all that is holy, what is up with that thing?"

"It's a stress ball."

His apoplexy was abruptly tinged with concern, and Juliet felt a little sorry for baiting him earlier. It wasn't like it was her fault that he made it so easy, though, and she liked having his attention focused on her in whatever way she could get it, although admitting that was something like a weakness.

"And you're....feeling stressed?"

"No—well, yes, but I bought it because it's supposed to strengthen your grip." She mimed holding a pistol.

"Ah," he said. "Faster fire rate."

"You got it," she said. "Why Hua? I can almost understand talking to the de la Cruz kid again—he seemed off, and he had that tattoo you couldn't identify—"

"Probably just teenage rebellion," Lassiter said. "Here we are."

He marched around to the basement door like he was storming a castle. Juliet checked her badge, checked her sidearm because with Carlton, it never hurt to be prepared, and followed. They were both on edge lately, and they fed off each other's unease until they were one vicious, tangled cycle of high-strung anxiety. Juliet thought she was better at dealing with it, or at least better at _hiding_ it, but then—the rest of the world couldn't read her partner as well as she could.

Maybe she should call Val tonight and go out for drinks. That could be fun? No, that would definitely be fun, or at least a much-needed way to blow off steam. Of course, there was always the chance she'd end up pulling a double just to keep up with—

"OPEN UP," Carlton roared. "SPBD."

"Carlton, what are you _doing?"_

"I need to talk to her," he said. He raised his fist and banged hard on the door a couple of times. "HUA, OPEN THIS DOOR RIGHT NOW."

"Jesus, no, don't do that!" Juliet caught his arm before he could bang again. 

He glanced around and then hissed, "I think she's involved."

"Then, first of all, why didn't you tell me that? And second, I don't care if she is, you'll scare her to death!" she hissed back. "No—Carlton—stop it, get away from the door." She smacked his hands back and planted herself in front of him, and then added, still in a whisper, "And we _will_ be talking about this later."

There was the rattle of a chain being unfastened, and the door opened a crack. "Ms. Hua?" Juliet said. "I'm so sorry to disturb you. We have just a few follow-up questions about your call, may we come in?"

"Of—of course," the girl said. "Just a moment..." The door shut, and then opened wide. "I was on the way out to buy some groceries," Hua said to the ground. "I'm sorry, is there something else...?"

"Cut the crap," Carlton said. "We know you're involved. Here's what I think—I think you were getting in too deep with Immaculata. You found out they did more than push drugs to middle-schoolers and decided you wanted out, but you know that the minute you told someone what was going on in that house with those kids, they'd come after you. They're a small outfit, they come down on you hard if you turn snitch, am I right? What's the story, Hua?" He'd stayed close to the door, far out of Hua's personal space, but having a six-foot-something man storm your home and accuse you of a crime wasn't the least frightening thing in the world, no matter what the state of your guilt.

But Hua—

No longer was she looking at the ground; instead she'd straightened to her full height, spindling though her frame was, and she was glaring at Carlton—no, Juliet realized; Hua was glaring at _her_.

"You can't come in here and say things like that to me," Hua said. "I want you out. Get out of here. Please, leave." She was shaking, visibly trembling with strain.

"So you don't deny you have gang affiliations?"

"I—of course I don't have—this is already hard enough on me!" the girl said. "I have enough guilt without you, you yelling at me—"

"Yeah?" said Carlton. He did the thing he did, the thing where he casually unbuttoned his suit jacket so both the badge on his belt and the grip of his Glock 17 were visible. "Guilt over what? You want to tell me why you have a Mary statue in your living room, Hua? Are you Catholic?"

"No, I just—I found it at a garage sale, I thought it looked pretty, I can't...I feel bad about not calling..." Her chin was beginning to tremble, and tears were gathering in her lashes.

"That's enough," Juliet said. "Ms. Hua, thank you for your time, I'm sorry we had to disturb you like this. Carlton—"

"Right," he said.

There was something that made Juliet hesitate before she followed him out the door, though, something that made her hang back.

"Ms. Hua...Annie," she said. "Annie, I'm sure my partner's accusations are unfounded, but if— _if_ you are in any trouble, if you're just trying to get out, we can help you. We can protect you, and any more information you give us could save the lives of more children. You'll keep that in mind?" 

She waited until Annie gave her a wobbly nod, and then she let herself out.

Carlton was fuming by the car, his long arms braced against the rooftop, his head down; he looked like a bull about to charge.

"O'Hara," he said, but she cut him off before he could start. She could do that; she was good at it, and for her, he left himself wide, wide open.

"Get in the car," Juliet snapped. "I'm not arguing with you out in the middle of the street."

He scowled and obeyed, snapping the car door shut in protest. Their poor car—it had just recovered from that gunshot to the rear driver-side door, too.

Juliet took a deep breath, took another, held it for a count of ten. It was sunny outside, a true spring day in California, not a cloud in sight except the storm gathering in the interior of their little partnership. 

"You cannot bully anyone like that," she finally said. "She's a nineteen-year-old kid—"

"She's a young adult who's our only witness, and something smells about her. Don't tell me I'm supposed to offer her hugs and roses until—"

"We have no, NO evidence that she's a suspect other than your gut instinct—"

"Oh, and I suppose—" He cut himself off with visible effort. "Forget it."

"Forget it? Carlton, I am not going to 'forget it' just because you order me to! What were you going to say?"

His gaze cut over to her and then back to the street, but that was enough. "Oh no," she said. "You are not going to start treating me like some china doll just because I finally tell you how I feel about you. No. Absolutely not. Spit it out."

"I don't want to argue with you," he said.

"We're not arguing, we're problem-solving."

"Fine," he said. "I was going to say that I suppose you'd be perfectly willing to trust Spencer's dumbass psychic vibrations, but when I'm the one with a hunch—"

"If you hadn't cut me off, I would have said that of course I trust your instincts, but that does not mean you can harass her, even if she's a potential suspect." He scoffed, and Juliet smacked her open hand against the dashboard. "No, come on, you want to talk about results? What do you think's going to get her to open up—an offer of police protection if she turns informant, or some big, scary officer yelling at her? You're a better detective and a better man than that."

Furious, he shoved the key into the ignition and started the car. Juliet slumped back and buckled her seatbelt; she felt as drained as she ever had, but still no less than determined to make sure Carlton curbed his acerbic, aggressive side around witnesses and _stopped_ curbing it with her. He could be loud, invasive, intimidating, and frustrating as anything, but it was that doggedness that had cracked more than a few of their cases open. This was why it was a bad idea for couples to work together in a job like theirs, she understood—or, rather, one of the reasons. Not that they were a couple. They definitely weren't, nope, no way.

They drove past a Starbucks. God, a coffee would be perfect right about now.

"Okay," Carlton said. "Fine, maybe you were right."

Involuntarily, Juliet found herself smiling at her own reflection in the window. "That is what a girl likes to hear."

"Nn," he said. "Didn't you mention you were repainting your living room this weekend?"

Now her reflection was returning her bewildered corkscrew expression. "I...well, yes, I have the paint, but there's a lot of heavy furniture that I need to move, and everyone's busy—"

"Want some help?"

Was he trying to apologize, in some kind of obtuse way? "Are you offering?"

"What, are you deaf to implication?"

"Are you sure that's a good idea?"

"No," he said, "but I'm offering anyway. You could use an extra set of hands, I have nothing planned on Saturday other than trying to sneak into the station to rewatch the security footage from the gas station."

"The killer had on a mask, we couldn't even tell what he was wearing—"

"Yeah, well. I'd rather help you paint anyway, O'Hara."

She really did want to repaint, and it would go a lot faster with Carlton's help—and, of course, it was a chance to see him outside of work, with a legitimate pretense. Partners helped each other with that kind of thing all the time. Gutierrez had loaned Shelley a hand in cleaning out his garage just last week, hadn't she? 

"Then thank you, that would be great. What time on Saturday?"

He shrugged. "I have a couple of errands to run in the morning, so sometime between ten and twelve? You need me to be more specific than that?" 

"No, that's perfect. I'll order us some pizza. Ooh, maybe I'll make us a mixtape!"

"How stuck in the eighties are you? Even I know the cool kids don't make mixtapes anymore."

"Who said I was a cool kid?" She grinned at him, and he grinned back, and it was okay. It was all going to be okay. "So," she said, "we have one killer on tape, no forensic evidence, no face, no motive."

"Risky chance, going into a high-traffic area and killing them in broad daylight," he said. "Nothing stolen, not even the smack."

And it was horrible to say, but with their equilibrium restored, she could admit that this was what she lived for, the golden ticket for which she'd yearned and trained and sweated and bled.

"I have some ideas about that," she said.

And Carlton said, "Let's hear 'em."

-

She didn't get around to calling Valeria until Friday, which was just fine; Val had a roller derby meet out-of-town the next day, but she was happy to join Juliet at one of their usual haunts for drinks after dinner.

"Hey, lady," she said, and slung an arm around Juliet's neck. "How's crime?"

"Mmph—" Juliet set down her drink and squeeze Val around the waist. "Crime is good, how's fire?"

"Fire is a pain in my ass. I swear, people get dumber every year, might as well light the damn trees myself. I dug pits eight, nine hours a day last week. You could grate cheese on my abs."

"Show-off! How tired are you, though, seriously?"

Val shrugged and slid into her own barstool. One of the men sitting at the table behind her eyed her as she did, and Juliet didn't even pretend to be nonchalant about pulling her SBPD badge out of her purse and setting it on the table beside her glass.

"It's not so bad, at least I get lots of time off in-between. Hey, hey! Waiter, over here? I'll take what she's having, straight up, lots of olives."

"Definitely lots of olives," Juliet added. "More olives for me, too. Actually, you know what, I'll just have another one of these." The waiter scribbled their order on his pad, gave them a distracted smile, and departed, only for Val to collapse into giggles.

"What?" said Juliet.

"Nothing," said Val.

"No, come on."

"He was adorable, wasn't he?"

"Val!" Juliet hissed, and bent over the table, although the odds they'd be overheard in this clamor were slim. "He's a baby!"

"He has to be twenty-one if he's serving liquor, and we aren't that old. So how's your mom?"

Juliet sighed and ate one of her olives. This was exactly what she needed.

"She's better," she said. "Still getting over the ear infection. She wants to have Christmas in Disneyworld, can you believe it? I can't decide if that's a terrible idea, or an amazing one."

Val pulled her long, dark hair out of her ponytail and combed through it with her fingers. She was dressed in lavender culottes, a Mission City Brawlin' Betties shirt, and bright yellow pumps; the look shouldn't have worked for her, particularly with her pale skin and the terrible bar lighting, but it did. Juliet felt plain in her own dark suit and white blouse, but she'd come straight from work, and anyway—she wasn't sure she'd want to wear lavender culottes even if she could pull them off.

"Expensive," Val judged. "But it does save her having to cook. Can everyone afford it?"

"She offered to help us out, but that's still a lot for the people who have kids. My brother might call me in to talk her out of it."

"Hostage negotiations," Valeria said. Their martinis arrived; Juliet swapped out her glass and ate one of her new olives. 

"Something like that. Oh man, how's the team? Who are you guys going up against tomorrow? Do you want some mozzarella sticks?"

"I want at least twenty mozzarella sticks," Val said, and proceeded to order three baskets of the same. It was possible that breaded cheese and vodka didn't make for the _best_ dinner, but for four glorious hours, Juliet didn't think at all about any of the recently deceased waiting in the morgue for their justice. She didn't think about crime scenes or gangs or kidnappings, she didn't think about paperwork or the staggering number of open cases she and Carlton were juggling, and she did not think about killing or neglect or addiction.

An intense dissection of the southern California roller derby circuit carried them through the first basket of mozzarella sticks and marinara sauce. That was followed by detailed but improbable plans to take a biking trip out to Big Sur next summer, a short venture into current films and Juliet's absolutely trashy taste in cinema, a comparison of the completely weird things their nieces and nephews did, and budget shortages. By eleven they were pleasantly buzzed and Juliet was explaining the structure of the SPBD.

"So there's Chief Vick," she said, "and that's, like, the captain, and then there's Carlton, he's the head detective—"

"He's a sergeant?"

Juliet burped delicately. "Lieutenant. And he works mostly with the Major Crimes Unit, and so do I, but technically the entire investigative division falls under him, even though there's only about eighteen or twenty of us. And then there are the patrol officers, they're under Vick but not Carlton, because they have their own police lieutenant." She rearranged the salt shaker and the sweetener packets in an attempt to illustrate her point. The salt shaker was Vick—or wait, was it? "And we have four sergeants, and there are patrol sergeants but I can't remember how many, but then there are the uniforms, that's Buzz, who's really nice, and Nadine, I like her even though I was kind of mean to her the other week—"

"We're taking taxis home, just so you know," Val said.

"That is a wonderful, wonderful idea," said Juliet. "In fact, because I am supposed to be up early to paint my living room tomorrow, I am going to start drinking water as soon as I finish this." She attempted and mostly succeeded in chugging her current martini.

"Water!" Val said. "Water, I need some waiter! I mean—" She and Juliet took one look at each other and burst out laughing.

"Water, coming right up," said their supremely tolerant waiter. He brought them an entire pitcher of water, and between them they polished off that and the last of the mozzarella sticks, paid their bill, and split a cab home. 

Juliet drank another glass of water before she went to bed, stumbled to the bathroom four times in the night to pee, and woke up just after eight the next morning feeling—all things considered—pretty decent.

She showered first thing—because she smelled like bar even if nobody smoked indoors anymore—toweled her hair off, and braided it back still damp. In the kitchen, Thumper and Flower were sitting in a neat row on the kitchen table like soldiers awaiting orders.

"Okay, cats," she said. "Here's what we're going to do. First, we're going to eat"—two pairs of ears pricked forward at this announcement—"and then we're going to move all of the little stuff, and then we're going to move all of the big stuff, and then you two are going to spend some quality time in the bedroom so you don't decide to stick a paw in a bucket of paint."

Flower twisted her head to the side in befuddlement. Thumper stared.

"Foooooood," said Juliet, and went to dig out the can opener.

For the cats: wet food in beef and turkey. For the human: two eggs, a piece of toast, and an orange. The cats, having finished their own meal, attempted a flanking maneuver on the last of the eggs, but the human, well-versed in anti-cat tactics, stood up from her chair and dumped half of the feline forces on the floor.

"Aw, guys, it was a good effort," she said. "Better luck next time?"

Flower rolled over and offered her belly for scratches. Thumper hissed.

"Uh-huh," said Juliet, and went to pour herself a second cup of coffee.

It was quarter past ten and Carlton still hadn't showed. He'd said he might not arrive until noon, but Juliet had, frankly, expected him by nine-thirty sharp. She cleared away all the knickknacks and end tables, the lamps and picture frames; by ten forty-five she was starting to get anxious, even though moving her heavier seating and shelves was definitely, verifiably a two-person job.

"Oh, screw it!" she said, and started pushing on of the armchairs towards the kitchen. It squealed a little alarmingly on the floor, but with a lot of heaving she managed to push it into a corner without trapping any cat tails or paws, which she and Val had done the last time she'd rearranged. Flower—sweet, good-natured Flower—still turned her back to Val.

Her coffee table was lightweight enough that she could carry it to the back without too much effort, but the real problems were the curio shelves and the entertainment center. She spent a couple of minutes on her back, writhing around in an attempt to untangle and unplug all of the cords, and then she took the TV and laid it on her bed. The shelves, a twin pair of spindly towers, were heavy and awkwardly tall; maybe if she braced her foot against the bottom shelf, she'd be able to tip it towards her and push—?

She tried. The shelf skidded out from under her and crashed against her temple. "Son of a—!" she yelled, and only just managed to catch the piece against her shoulder before it skidded out. She pushed it upright again; it rocked and then settled into place, and at that moment the doorbell rang.

It was Carlton, of course, dressed in jeans and an old Dodgers tee; he was carrying a six pack of beer, and his eyes almost rolled back in his head when he saw her.

"What's wrong?" Juliet said.

"You're bleeding," he said, and pushed inside without waiting for an invitation. "What happened? Where's your first aid kit? Do you have a concussion?" He dropped the beer on the counter and started going through her drawers.

She touched her forehead; her fingers came away wet with just the faintest smear of blood. "I'm fine," she said. "I tried to move one of those shelves and ended up catching it with my head."

He finally dug out a clean towel and shoved it against her forehead, cupping the back of her neck to keep her in place. "Sure you don't have a concussion? Hold this, I'll get some ice—"

Juliet caught him by the shirtsleeve. "I'm fine, I promise. No concussion, just a little blood. See?" She pulled the towel away and then yelped when it stuck to her cut.

"Oh suuuure, you're just fine," he said. "Why didn't you wait for me?"

She covered her cut with the towel so it shaded her eyes. "I don't know, I just thought..."

"What, O'Hara?"

"You weren't here right away, and I figured I could do it myself," she said.

There was a beat of silence, and then the refrigerator opened and something clanked—oh, he was putting the beer away—before she heard him rummaging in her freezer. "Here," he said, and pressed a bag of frozen...peas?...into her hand. "Leave the towel on. Band-aids in the bathroom?" He didn't wait for an answer before she heard him stomp away. He was back in a couple of seconds, peeling the towel back and cleaning her skin with an alcohol wipe before he dabbed some neosporin on the cut and sealed a bandage over it. Up close, his eyes were distractingly bright.

"Good?"

"Good," she said.

He busied himself with her first aid kit, folding the gauze squares and shuffling the bandages so they sat in a neat stack. "Look, O'Hara—this isn't a comment on your capability. I have no doubt that if I hadn't showed up, you would've hauled those damn shelves to the moon if you wanted. The point is, you didn't have to."

Juliet touched the bandage and hissed; she'd have a knot there soon enough. Maybe some painkillers weren't a bad idea. "It's no big deal, when you weren't here at ten I thought—"

"What time did I tell you I'd be here?"

She huffed. "No later than twelve."

"What time is it now?"

"...Eleven-oh-three."

"And have I ever given you reason to believe I wouldn't show up when I told you I would?"

She wanted to blow him off, but she paused, because they were partners, and partners were honest with each other. "No," she said. "No, you haven't."

"Then don't judge me by whoever else taught you to expect a no-show."

She grumbled a little under her breath; there might have been an apology in there, but it was overshadowed by a far more pointed, "You're lucky I let you in wearing those colors."

He looked down at his Dodgers shirt, and then further; his legs were hidden behind the island, but Juliet suspected that Flower had come out to say hello. "Your pet begs to differ," he said. "In fact, I think this cat is a Dodgers fan, aren't you?" There was a faint rumble of a purr, and then Carlton bent down and scooped up not Flo, but Thumper, who intensified his purr and offered his nose to Carlton for inspection. "Huh, you weren't kidding about the friendly one," her partner said.

Juliet gaped. 

"What?" he said, through a mouthful of fur—Thumper was ramming his head against Carlton's chin in what looked suspiciously like a feline gesture of affection.

"That isn't the friendly one," Juliet said.

"What?" he said again. "Ow—hey, what the hell is it doing?"

"He's making biscuits," Juliet said. Thumper was now curled over Carlton's shoulder; her partner looked flummoxed at this development. "Kneading," she said. "It means he likes you. Haven't you been around cats before?"

"Only barn cats," he said. With great difficulty—because Thumper kept hooking his claws into Carlton's shirt—he managed to extract the cat and deposit it on the floor.

When he caught Juliet watching him, he scowled at her, but his ears went red. She grinned to herself. There was something so comfortable about having him here—even when, with typical bluntness, he called out a character trait she hadn't even wanted to admit. He'd always used admission of all those therapy sessions to flagellate himself, but she found herself wondering if he hadn't learned something from his counseling other than self-deprecation. And there was that; it was an absurd trait in a man who inflated like the Michelin Man when he thought he deserved praise, but Juliet had long thought that there was a streak in him that actually believed all those cracks about worthlessness.

"Ready, O'Hara?" he said.

She shook her thoughts off. "Ready," she said. "Mind if I turn on the radio?"

"No," he said. He was poking through the pile of paint cans and dropcloths in the corner of the room. "When are you doing the second coat?"

Juliet pulled a face. "Tomorrow?"

"If you don't mind a long day, we can put it up tonight, move all your heavy cargo back, you can rehang the pictures next week."

She found her radio under the sink and tuned it to KLAA, which had already started their pre-game coverage. Brief disgust crossed Carlton's face, and she obligingly turned the volume down.

"Oh, come on," she said. "Pony up."

"You know, I can let you do this by yourself. Maybe you'll knock yourself out this time and spare us all the pain of having to listen to the _Anaheim_ Angels fumble through another game."

"I think you mean the _Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim_ ," she said. He was shifting the shelf that had bloodied her earlier; she took the other side, and they carried it to the back together.

"You heard what I said. All right to go backwards?"

"It's fine, I've got it," she said. "And sorry, I didn't realize the Dodgers were so fragile that sharing the city with another team would unman them."

"Ha ha. Left more—watch your elbow—"

The deposited the piece and went back for the second set of shelves, and the entertainment center, the armchairs, and the couch. Juliet was assisted in spreading out the dropcloth by two very eager cats, who seemed at this point to think that the humans were running around for their amusement. Flower crawled under the dropcloth, lost her way, and started crying pitifully; Juliet had to rescue her, and then she shut both of them in the bedroom.

"Don't give me that look," she told Carlton when she came back.

"The face came like this, can't do a thing about it."

"You know what I mean, the look—that look, the look that says you think I'm a crazy animal hugger." He opened his mouth, and she threw a paintbrush at him.

"Ow! What was that for?"

"You were about to tell me your squirrel casserole story, or make some kind of 'people eating tasty animals' joke even though we both just witnessed you bonding with my cat." 

"I was—yeah, okay, maybe." He clapped his hands together, and she tossed him the painter's tape; he caught it and started edging off the trim while she took off all the faceplates. 

She finished well before he did, and so she let herself watch him. He was frowning in concentration as he taped off the trim around the door, a job that he was taking far more seriously than Juliet would have herself. He had nice hands and a ridiculous face, she thought to herself—or was it the other way around? She loved watching him work like this, though, loved seeing the slightly absurd degree of attention he put into what he really cared about. 

He looked up and caught her gaze, and his frown shifted to puzzlement. "What?"

"Nothing," said Juliet.

He huffed at her, but his ears went red again. Juliet went back to her job, this time smiling.

They worked in accord and more or less silence for the next couple of hours; Juliet did the fine edging along the trim and corners, and Carlton followed her with the roller brush until she got tired of the precision work and demanded they switch. After he complained about the smell giving him a headache, Juliet cracked open a couple of windows for a cross-breeze. She managed to keep most of the paint off her clothes, too, although at one point she turned her head too quickly and her hair got caught under the roller of Carlton's brush. Now she had paint crusting in the bottom third of her ponytail.

When the first coat was finished, they broke into the beer he'd brought along and called for a pizza. Over the radio, the crowd at Angel Stadium roared their approval at a good play. Juliet drummed her heels against the counter; her foot just brushed her partner's leg on its return arc. She was tempted to kick him, see if she could startle him into saying something or at least make him look away from the drying paint—he was wearing one of those dumb smug expressions that meant he was proud of applying color to a wall.

She gave into the impulse and jabbed him with her toes. He yelped.

"What!"

"Having fun watching paint dry, Carlton?"

"Something wrong with taking pleasure in a job well done?"

"We aren't done yet," she pointed out. "Although, I have to say, it's definitely an improvement. This place needed a new coat of paint. Why don't you like football?"

"...I don't follow."

Now she felt herself turning red. "Sorry, it's just—I was wondering. I've been wondering." 

He raised his eyebrows. "I don't not like football."

"Oh," she said.

"In fact, O'Hara, I have no feelings about football whatsoever."

"Oh," she said again. "Well...good."

He tipped the last of his beer into his mouth, swallowed, and tossed the empty bottle into her trash can. She took a little bit of voyeuristic pleasure in watching his throat work. "You were seriously contemplating _that?"_

"Among other things! Like...why did I eat all those olives last night? Will we ever meet the Chief's husband? Why did you decide to become a cop?"

"You like salt with vodka, I doubt he exists, and—" In a fit of nonchalance, he hopped up on the island opposite her, mirroring her pose. "I was an angry kid. Got into a lot of trouble. Hit a bad point, someone made a suggestion, and here I am." He shrugged. "SBPD's youngest head detective."

"No!" She feigned a gasp. _"You're_ the head detective? Tell me more!"

"It isn't an easy job, but the crooks—hey. Hey!" He caught on too late; she was already laughing at him.

"Laugh it up, O'Hara," he said, but when she tried to smother her giggles with a hand and still hiccupped with amusement, he let a half-grin cut through his offense. "All right, come on. What about you? One brother in the service, another the dedicated family man, what—did you decide to split the difference?"

"Mm, maybe." Juliet took a swig of her beer. "It's easy to say that I signed up because of my dad, but the truth is that the only thing I ever seriously wanted to be. It's a messy, mean, heart-wrenching, thankless job, the hours are crazy, my coworkers are jerks—"

"You must fit right in."

She smirked at him. "—To say nothing of my partner. Or the paperwork. God, the paperwork." The paperwork was the worst; everything had to be logged in triplicate, signed, witnessed, and filed, to the point that even the top dogs spent more of their work hours writing reports than they did tracking down criminals. "But I guess...I like to feel like I'm making a difference. I like...I like being the person who stands between the wolves and the door."

"Huh," Carlton said. "I'll drink to that." He popped the lid off another bottle and saluted her; Juliet clinked her bottle against his, and they drank together.

It made her wonder—

Thoughts like this were strictly off-the-record. In fact, she was exquisitely, painfully aware of the degree to which thoughts like this were _verboten_ , but it made her wonder—all kinds of things. What it would be like to come home to Carlton every day. What it would be like to have a joint bank account with him, to share all those mundane tasks and habits that were the foundation of a life, what it would be like to have their clothes in the same closet, his suits next to hers, their sweatpants in the same drawer, their socks getting mixed up in the wash.

It made her wonder what his routine was in the evenings, what he'd look like through a half-open bathroom door as he shaved in the mornings, whose family they'd visit on holidays, which car they'd take when they drove down to the park to go running. It made her wonder what kind of wedding they'd have, and how a ring would look on his hand, and how many kids he wanted. It made her wonder where they'd retire, who would do the laundry, which one of them would pick up the dry cleaning. She wondered about these things often, but she rarely let the answers rise to the surface of her mind; they remained half-formed fantasies, the stuff of those brief moments between closing her eyes and drifting away to sleep.

The doorbell rang.

"Must be the pizza," said Carlton, and he hopped down from the counter and went to answer the door.

"Must be," said Juliet.

-

Their first real break in the case came when Leilani Kekoa drove up from L.A. to present them with a sheaf of files. Juliet came to work and found her talking to Carlton at his desk; she dodged the Chief, ducked around Shawn and Gus, and made a beeline for her partner.

Carlton broke off whatever he was saying to introduce her. "O'Hara," he said, "this is Leilani Kekoa, an old friend of mine with the LAPD. She drove up as a favor to brief us on Immaculata. Kekoa, O'Hara, my partner."

"Nice to meet you," Kekoa said, and took Juliet's proffered hand. She was a tall woman, broad-shouldered, with a gorgeous but affable face. Her coloring and name said native Hawaiian.

"Please, call me Juliet," Juliet returned. "You work on the gang unit?"

"Something like that," Kekoa said, and picked up a stack of file folders from Carlton's desk. "You got somewhere quieter than this circus that we can talk?"

Juliet turned to Carlton to catch his eyes. It was an assurance they exchanged dozens of times a day; but, curiously, he was avoiding her. "We'll grab a conference room. O'Hara, bring the case files."

"Sure," said Juliet. She located the necessary paperwork at her desk and followed the others down the hall, to the small room where she and Carlton liked to spread out when they were working late. "Coffee, anyone?"

"No, but thank you," Kekoa said. Carlton shook his head; Juliet took a seat next to him. "So," Kekoa continued, "if you're comfortable, why don't you two tell me what you've got, and I'll tell you if you're dealing with the Advocate or not."

"What we've got are two—or rather, five—homicides, with no decent leads," said Carlton.

"The first set were three children, two girls and a boy between the ages of ten and twelve. They were locked in the basement of an apparently abandoned house," Juliet cut in. "They'd been systematically abused and starved over a matter of months. We...have reason to suspect they were kidnapped by a person or persons running a prostitution ring."

"Shit," said Kekoa. "What else?"

Carlton folded his arms over his chest. "Two homicides at a gas station."

"What makes you think it's connected to the first crime?"

"Couple of things," Carlton said, sliding the top folder out from under Juliet's folded hands and flipping it open. He pulled out the stack of pictures and showed them to Kekoa, who looked up at him sharply.

"They were shot—" she started.

"Stigmata, yeah," said Carlton. "There's the tag left by the killer. 'Her grace through faith and deed.' Not to mention the ring we found in one of the first girls' stomachs." He produced another picture of that, a side by side of the ring's engraving. "It's from the Immaculata prayer. My gut says none of this is a coincidence."

Kekoa leaned back in her chair and studied the photographs, holding a couple of them up to the light. When she reached the picture of their John Doe, she winced.

"Well?" said Carlton.

"Well, this is what you think it is," said Kekoa. "In fact, I think it's worse than that."

"What do you mean?" said Juliet.

Kekoa popped her knuckles. "Immaculata is a tough nut to crack. They don't operate like other street gangs, but they try a little bit of everything. The only information we get is from affiliates, never gang members—you've never seen loyalty like this. I suspect that whoever heads this crew is hands-on, works out of southern Cali, does a lot of recruiting himself. They call him 'The Advocate,' but nobody knows his real name. He's got a thing for appropriating Christian imagery, particularly anything relating to Mary, which you may have noticed."

"Catholic?" said Carlton.

"Probably. We've tied them to all kinds of things—even more than you have, Carlton, and we have enough to lock some of the junior members away, but we got nothing on the higher-ups. This crew might as well be run by a ghost."

"What about Alvarez?" said Juliet. "One of our contacts—"

_"My_ contacts," said Carlton. Kekoa arched her brows.

"I—yes," said Juliet, off-balance, "one of Carlton's contacts, he gave us reason to think his uncle had dealings with someone further up in the hierarchy."

"I'm doing what I can," said Kekoa, "but you wouldn't believe the caseload I have. It's obscene. I'll keep my ear to the ground, though. Your gas station killings—you two are right, that's probably an initiation. I brought along a couple of similar cases, and a few others we got convictions on, some profile stuff on the gang. A lot of it's guesswork."

"Thanks," said Juliet. "We appreciate your help."

"No problem," said Kekoa. "You let me know if I can do anything else. I should get back to my own jurisdiction, but Juliet, it was great to finally meet you. Lassiter, you wanna walk me to my car?"

"Why would I walk you to—oof!" In that moment, Juliet strongly suspected Kekoa had kicked her partner under the table. "Oh—right," corrected Carlton. "Walk you to your car, what a _great_ idea."

Juliet rolled her eyes as they exited, but she was still feeling...a sting, that's what it was, from Carlton claiming priority over their contact. He was right, technically; Julio Zavala was his acquaintance, but he rarely pulled that kind of possessive, alpha-male bullcrap on her anymore, and just about never in front of other people.

He came back a couple of minutes later; she was reading through Kekoa's files, comparing them to her own crime scene notes. "Anything good?"

"'Good' is not the right word," she said, "but helpful, definitely. Hey, I just wanted to thank you again for helping me paint last weekend. I finally got the last of the pictures back up, and it looks _fantastic_ , I cannot believe..."

"Can it," he said.

"...Excuse me?" said Juliet.

"You heard me, O'Hara. I don't want to hear it. I did you a favor, no need to gush all over me." He did look at her then; one of his hands was in his pocket, and the other went to his throat to adjust his tie. "We don't have to talk about it."

"I..."

"I have some follow-up calls to make. Clean up in here when you're done, will you?" He was out the door before she could do more than splutter at him.

He maintained that distance between them for the rest of the day, and for the day after that. Juliet did her best to tamp down her unease and her—all right, she could admit it—her hurt, but it still took her too long to realize why he was doing what he was doing. This wasn't standard Lassiterian asshole behavior; after that initial redrawing of the lines, he was cordial, plenty willing to work with her, but if she turned the conversation personal, if she teased him, if she made him coffee as she was making her own, he turned her aside with neat efficiency.

And then she realized: Oh. He was pulling away as a courtesy. He was...he was being professional.

After that she did her best to respond in kind, although it was hard, especially after she had to take the stand for a particularly brutal domestic assault case. Where before he would have taken her out to eat, probably at the diner, and told her outrageous stories about being taught by nuns, he now passed her over to Shawn and Gus, who bought her frozen yogurt and reenacted select scenes from Monty Python. She did laugh, but she couldn't shake her worry.

Who would cheer Lassiter up after a hard day? She wondered. She used to take him out to the diner, too, or go for a run with him, or send him YouTube clips from Civil War documentaries. Now, she was allowed nothing.

"Jules?"

Shawn was reaching for her empty yogurt cup. She handed it to him, and he carried it to the trash before returning to her bench.

"Thanks," she said.

"No problemo," he said. "Gus had to split. Something something pharmaceuticals. I keep telling him that we make enough as investigators that he doesn't have to hold down two jobs, but there is just no talking to that man."

"Maybe he likes it?" Juliet was a little skeptical of the idea.

"Maybe," said Shawn. "Listen, there's actually something I wanted to talk to you about." He hooked his arms over the back of the bench and stretched his legs out in front of him, the ultimate how-to in lounging. Oh boy. This was going to be a big one.

"Sure. You know you can talk to me about anything."

"Yeah. Yeah, well, I was wondering if—you aren't seeing anyone now, are you?"

How did she answer that? "I...no," she said, slowly.

"Me neither. Ugh, I'm not doing this right." He sat up again, folded his knees. It was just the time of day when the setting sun shimmered off the ocean, and Juliet wished for her sunglasses.

"What I wanted to say is...how would you feel about dinner?"

"Dinner?" said Juliet. "You mean...like, a date?"

"That, Jules, is exactly what I mean." When she didn't answer, he added, "Unless, you know, you are philosophically opposed to the concept of dating, which seems ridiculous, since I've seen you date before. Wow, I do go on."

And how did she answer _this?_ Shawn was sweet, and he made her laugh; she'd thought at the beginning of their acquaintance about going out with him, in part because he was less than subtle about his attraction to her. He was sweet and funny—but there was nothing about him that made her yearn for a future, and her mind was very much on the future of late.

"I need to think about it," she said.

"Fair enough." He stood up, shoved his hands in his pockets, and rocked back on his heels. "But hey, don't make this awkward. Geez, Jules, you can't just spring this on a guy."

"Ha ha," she said. "I've gotta get back to the station. Tell Gus thanks for the yogurt."

"Will do," he said.

She spent the drive back to work feeling absolutely number. Carlton was at his desk when she arrived; he passed his eyes over her face once, snapped his gaze back, and said, "What is it?"

"I know this isn't—and we aren't—can I talk to you? Somewhere not here?"

"Interrogation room?"

"That's fine."

He followed her until they were inside and had shut the door. She stood there for a moment, gathering herself, and turned to find him leaning against the table as he watched her.

"What is it, O'Hara?"

"Shawn asked me out," she said.

Something flickered across his face. "Did he."

"What do I even tell him? I hate this!" She smacked her open palm against the door; the crack almost forced tears from her, and she hated, she _hated_ crying over something like this. It was dumb, it was stupid, it was _absolutely_ her own decision. She snarled and paced to the opposite site of the damn room.

"Tell him yes," said Carlton.

"What?"

"Tell him," he repeated, "yes."

She was stunned, and he read it. "O'Hara—" he continued. "You and I, we aren't anything. Or we need to not be anything. We agreed to move on. That means dating other people. You should...you should find someone who makes you happy. Say yes, go out with Spencer, see if you like it."

"You mean that."

There was a tic working in his jaw, but he was sincere when he answered, "I do."

There was a torrent building in her throat, behind her teeth. "I—" she started to say, but then someone pounded on the door.

"Detectives?" It was Officer Young's voice. "There's someone asking for you. She seems pretty shaky—"

"Who is it?" Lassiter snapped. "Christ, just open the door."

Young put her head inside. "Says her name is Annie Hua. Do you want to talk to her?"

They exchanged a look and shot forward at the same time. "We've got it, Young!" Juliet called. "Thanks!"

Hua was up front. She was visibly shaking and was holding herself in an effort to quell the tremors. "You said you can protect me, right, you said that, you can't—I promise I can tell you, but you have to swear they won't come after me—"

Juliet took Hua by the elbow and guided her between the desks before she broke down in front of everyone; Carlton was already at the Chief's office, the nearest room with a door, opening it up and making sure nobody followed.

"We can make sure they won't hurt you, Annie," Juliet said, although of course that wasn't an absolute. "What do you have to tell us?"

"You were right, I used to be—there's this gang," Hua said. "Called Immaculata."

"We know," Carlton said. "You used to be a member?"

"I was, they let me...I told them I just wanted to study, you know, I was tired of everything, they said I could go if I didn't ever tell anyone about them. They watch me sometimes, but those kids. I had to leave. I'm sorry I lied. But you can't...you won't hurt them, will you?"

"The kids?" Juliet said.

"The gang," Hua said. "They're a family, okay, I know it sounds sick, and some of the stuff they do is—"

"Nobody's going to get hurt if we can help it," Juliet said. "Can you give us any names? Meeting places? Details?"

"That's why I came now," Hua said. "There's some kind of—I think they're bringing in more kids. There's a warehouse, down on Hollin Street, that they're supposed to be at tonight. I had...a friend told me."

Juliet crouched down so she was looking up into Hua's face. Whatever inkling of compassion she felt for this girl was, at least now, outweighed by the knowledge that she had been involved with an organization that sold _children_. There would be time for compassion later, but now she had to play the game.

"You trust your friend?" she said.

"I do," said Hua.

"What time tonight?" said Carlton.

"I don't know. Now? Sometime after dark?"

"Shit," he said. "Okay. Hua, you're staying here under police protection." He pushed out the door and was back in a blink with a uniformed officer. "O'Hara—"

"Body armor, backup."

"Right. I'll put out a bulletin. McNab? McNab! Call the Chief!"

Juliet stopped by her desk, changed her shoes, checked her Glock, and went to retrieve the Kevlar. Carlton met her halfway; they pulled on the armor, checked each other's fastenings, and, satisfied, bumped fists before they took off. McNab and a herd of helmeted officers followed them; Lassiter turned around to shout at them as they walked. 

"We don't know what we're going into, so pay attention and stay alert!" he said. "We're heading to the old warehouse at Hollin and Lindor. We may encounter armed, organized hostiles—going up against a gang. Do not fire first! Understood?"

There was a chorus of approval; Juliet darted ahead to hold the door open. She just managed to catch Lassiter before he backed down the steps.

The drive was a flurry of sirens and radio talk. Lindor Boulevard dead-ended behind a little-used parking lot, and Hollin Street ran almost down to the shore. After dusk the area should be deserted, unless the vending company that used one of the neighboring buildings for storage was dropping off a shipment. She and Carlton were first on the scene, but the squad cars squealed to a halt mere heartbeats behind them.

"How do we do this?" he said.

She ducked below the cover of the car and circled around to consult. "We don't know that anyone is even here. Send McNab and Garcia around the back, you and I take the rest and go in the side door to the left."

"Everyone here that? Young, you're with me. McNab, stay in contact. We do this textbook."

The last gray glow of the day was fading away as they circled the building. There was good clearance on every side except the southeast, where only a narrow alley separated the warehouse from the next one over. About halfway down, just past the sole spotlight, was a garage door propped open with a brick. Juliet drew her pistol and thumbed the safety; her hands had long ago ceased to quiver at the action.

They hugged the warehouse wall as they worked their way to the door, Carlton just ahead of Juliet, Young and the other two uniforms just behind her.

"No cars," Juliet hissed.

Carlton didn't look back. "Doesn't mean anything," he hissed back. "They could have parked at the shore and—"

A roar cut them off. "DOWN!" Juliet yelled, and reached for her partner at the same time he reached for her. They threw themselves across the alley and covered their heads just fast enough to escape the glass blowing out of the upper windows.

Bomb. There was a bomb—

She was shaky and her ears were ringing, but her limbs were intact, and she could feel Carlton's chest heaving against her side. "OKAY?" she shouted, and he nodded back. He hadn't lost his gun; Juliet scrambled to retrieve hers, at the same time checking that no one else had been seriously injured, when Carlton said something lost to the howl of the fire and bolted down the alley.

Juliet lunged and caught him by the back of the vest. "Carlton, what—"

"THERE'S SOMEONE THERE," he yelled.

"Don't you dare go alone—!" she tried to communicate, but he shook her off and raced away, straight towards the epicenter of the fire.

"Mother _fucker,"_ she spit. "Young, call the fire department. Devon, you check with McNab, make sure he's okay." And then she took off, running as fast as her legs would take her after her stupid, brave, stupid asshole of a partner. The smoke was thick enough to obscure her field of view, but she just caught the flash of a white face darting in through the blown-open shutter door.

She shouted further unflattering things in her head and pushed forward. If the explosion was localized against this side of the warehouse, then there was a chance she could circle around and cut through the back entrance. She had to stop more than once to cough and spit, and she staggered more than that—her head felt like it was still rattling around in her skull—but she made herself push on, because it was her job, and her duty, and because if her partner got himself killed chasing phantoms she would—she would—

He shot out of the back entrance just as she rounded the corner; she almost ran him down when he doubled over to hack. He had soot on his face and a bundle under one arm, and Juliet wanted to shake him.

"What the hell!" she shouted.

He coughed, spit, coughed again, and held out the thing he had under his arm. It was a statue of the Virgin.

"You idiot," she said, but before she could lay into him she heard sirens and saw McNab barrel through the fog.

"Detective!" he said. "You're okay! We picked up some bystanders—or maybe they aren't bystanders—"

Juliet clapped Carlton on the back hard. "Take them down to the station!" she shouted. "We'll take their statements as soon as we can. Don't let anyone else talk to them!"

"Got it," Buzz said.

"And you—" she said, turning on her partner; but he cut her off when he slid a hand behind her neck under the tangle of her hair, bent down, and pressed his forehead to hers.

"You all right?" he said. He was talking far too loudly, but then, so was she.

Juliet breathed.

"O'Hara?"

"I'm fine," she said. "We're getting you checked by an EMT before we do anything."

"You, too," he said, and then he squeezed once and let her go.

The fire department had the last licks extinguished by the time they were cleared by a medic. Juliet's head ached, and she had scrapes on her hands; she set that aside. The crime scene unit was already combing through the wreckage, but the early survey produced no evidence other than the statue Carlton had found.

"It was placed after the bomb went off," he said. "It had to be."

"That explains the person you saw. Think it was one of the people Buzz picked up?"

"Don't know. Go find out?"

"Sounds good," she said, and they went, but not without stopping for coffee on the way back to the station. It was almost midnight.

Buzz was still there, bless him, and Young; they had the people they'd picked up lined up on a bench and had already taken statements. Juliet told both of them to go home.

"Sure?" Young said. She was almost asleep on her feet. 

"Positive," said Juliet. "Get some rest, take tomorrow off. We'll handle it from here." She pulled off her body armor, dumped it at her desk, and picked up Young's notes. "Merche? Merche Soledad?"

"That's me," said the woman at the far end of the bench. 

"Could you come with me, ma'am? I have just a few questions. May I call you Merche?" In another gross breach of protocol, Juliet borrowed the Chief's office yet again, but it wasn't like Vick was around to mind, and the station was empty of anyone else who might object. She offered Soledad one of the chairs and took up a position against the desk. "It says here that you were walking home when you saw the explosion."

"Yes, ma'm," said Soledad. She was a slim woman, short-haired, with strikingly sharp features and a square jaw; probably Latina, maybe in her mid-thirties. Her makeup was absolutely fabulous, to the point that Juliet would've felt envy if she'd had any energy to spare. "I live a couple of blocks west, and I cut through the back from the beach when it's still daylight. Detective, was anyone hurt?"

"No, no need to worry," Juliet said. "You work at…"

"Style Theater Hair Salon," Soledad said. She was twisting a ring on her right hand as she spoke, but she wasn't nervous, only tired. "They let me start coloring hair next week."

Juliet, tired herself, nonetheless judged her at face value, and asked only a few more questions before calling in the next witness. She asked Soledad to wait until they were finished, and then interviewed a tall, well-dressed salesman with crosses tattooed on the backs of his hands. Carlton was busy down the hall with the other two, a pair of young men who had probably been making out in the parking lot and were therefore innocent only of setting off bombs. She and Carlton finished at the same time.

"If you don't mind going back to the lobby, we'll be there in just a moment, and then you can all go home," Juliet told her witness. He flashed a grin at her and returned to his bench. The lobby at the other end of the station was the only area with all the lights turned on; from the dark pen of the investigative unit, it looked like a hallucination.

Carlton halted beside her, staring down at the four. The teenagers were holding hands and carefully not looking at each other. "Anything else you want to ask?"

"No," she said. "Yes. Why did you go in there alone?"

"O'Hara—"

"I tried to get you to wait. You should have waited. I told you I needed to have your back. If I don't have your back, what is the point of all of...of everything?"

"They can probably overhear us." 

"I don't care."

"We shouldn't be talking about this."

"I _really_ don't care. How would you feel if I did that to you?"

They were facing the same direction; it was harder to read him without looking at him, but not impossible. Carlton's silences said a lot.

"That's what I thought," said Juliet, and then she walked away.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so sorry.

Lassiter was running. He'd been going out for longer and longer distances over the past couple of months, no longer satisfied by four miles every morning or seven on the weekends; now he went out for entire days, picking the most isolated trails he could find, cramming a backpack with Clif Bars and energy gels and enough water to carry a thirsty man through a desert. It didn't take a psychic to figure out why he'd been possessed by a sudden mania for marathoning, but there were upsides to the whole thing—he slept better, for one, and it cleared his head, let him come at cases from a new angle.

There were still the Immaculata homicides, of course.

He was out at the FCT on a twelve-mile loop that took him through a couple of dense patches of woods. O'Hara had come out here with him once or twice. She was a pretty good runner herself, able to keep up with his pace or close enough, and at the end neither of them had been able to resist turning what was supposed to be a friendly day out into a race. That was, sweet lord, a year and a half, maybe two years after she'd transferred in, and he'd already been halfway gone for her.

Kekoa liked to give him shit about it. Kekoa liked to give him shit about everything. They'd been rookies together, before she'd moved down to Los Angeles to be near her then-girlfriend, now-wife, but when she'd recently done the solid of driving out to pass along her case files, she'd been in the room with him and O'Hara for less than five minutes before she'd divined what was going on under the veneer of professionalism. 

And _then_ she'd had the gall to take the crap out of him about it with that fake 'walk me to my car' act. "Lassiter, you poor sadsack," she'd said. "How long?" He hoped he wasn't so transparent to anyone else; God help him if Karen Vick had caught on.

"We're not talking about it," had been his response, and he'd maintained that line, even when O'Hara had slipped. She was dating Spencer now, though, a thing about which he was both deliriously, frighteningly angry, with the kind of self-righteous rage he hadn't displayed since adolescence, and wholly supportive. No one deserved to go home to an empty house every night for the rest of their life less than O'Hara.

So they didn't talk about it. They went to work, they did their job, O'Hara started to settle into a relationship with Spencer, and Lassiter went for a lot of runs. He was shooting less, at least, but couldn't decide if that was a good thing or a bad one.

He finished, he cooled down, he drove home, he showered. He woke up and put on a suit, picked out a tie—the blue striped one that O'Hara had complimented twice—he filed his reports, he went over notes for an approaching court date, he checked to see if O'Hara needed coffee and, finding that she did, he resisted the temptation to refill her cup.

He was spending a lot of time resisting temptation—a lot of time not letting it get in the way. He kept telling himself to stop moping around like the sadsack Kekoa had called him, but among the many unfortunate aspects of his personality were both the talent for falling ass-over-heels and a tendency towards rawness. Manning the fuck up rarely worked as well inwardly as it did outwardly.

Oh, and there was Spencer, bringing her a paper cup of coffee. Great.

"Hey, Jules," Spencer said. O'Hara tilted her head and accepted a kiss on the cheek. "I was thinking of hitting up the City Diner for some pancakes, you in?"

"Shawn, that's sweet. I was actually more in the mood for Mexican today, if that's okay?" O'Hara pulled from her repertoire a face sad enough to make Spencer's father weep.

"Sure thing, honeybunch," said Spencer. (Oh, _he_ got away with saccharine nicknames? O'Hara plainly wasn't a _honeybunch_.) "I have to talk to the Chief, we can head out after that."

"Sounds good," said O'Hara, and then she dutifully accepted another kiss on her cheek. Lassiter drifted briefly into a vivid fantasy about an outdoor shooting range north of town; if he closed his eyes, he could hear the birds chirruping, smell the gunpowder and hot metal, feel the sunshine on his face as he sighted down the range at a paper target. Both eyes open, that was how you shot, and so he opened his eyes to see O'Hara pulling her long hair out from under her suit jacket as she got ready to leave.

"Carlton?" she said across the aisle. "Is there anything I can bring back for you?"

 _Yes._ "No," he said, and then, because his mother hadn't—'raised' was a strong word—because his mother hadn't birthed a complete moron, he added, "Thanks."

"You know it," she said. Spencer came out of Vick's office, then, and they left together. Spencer held the door for her. The last glimpse Lassiter caught of her was her smile.

That night, as a special one-time allowance, he got shitfaced on a bottle of Scotch. By the bottom of the first glass, he was wondering if maybe it wasn't a good idea to go to confession, although he hadn't set foot in a church in years. By the bottom of the second glass, the world was tinged with a bittersweet bonhomie—one of Lassiter's great secrets was that he was an amiable drunk. By the bottom of the third glass, he was sprawled on his couch, tie undone, shirt rumpled, staring blearily at the ceiling as he wondered how often O'Hara's long hair clogged her shower drain.

Of course, that was when his phone rang.

He fumbled to find it on the coffee table and answered just before it went to voicemail. "Lass'ter," he slurred.

 _"The fuck?"_ It was Kekoa. _"Are you drunk?"_

"No," he said.

_"Uh-huh. Listen, I was just calling to follow up on the Immaculata thing, but I think that can wait until tomorrow. It's only six, what the hell happened to you?"_

"Nothing _happened_ ," he stressed, and tipped a little more of the Scotch into the glass resting on his chest. He did have to admit that it was hard to both talk and concentrate on not slopping liquor all over himself at the same time, although that might have been the angle. "I am merely exercising my god-given right as an American with hair on my chest to imbibe a nightcap."

Kekoa, the ass, laughed at him.

"Why is everyone laughing at me lately?" he said, stung, but Kekoa only laughed harder.

 _"'Lately?'"_ she said. _"Kiddo, you really are pissed if you think this is a recent development. Thank god I'm not close enough to have to play counsellor."_

"Like I would want you to play counsellor anyway," he retorted. "Christ, this would be so much easier if highball glasses came with straws. How's Jane?"

_"Jane's good. Well, she's grading midterms, but she's alive and in good health, if mentally unbalanced."_

"Good," Lassiter said. "That's good. I have a question about that."

_"I don't know if I want to hear it—"_

"When you moved down to LA," he said over her, "how did you know you were making the right choice?" Everyone had tried to talk her out of it. Hell, Lassiter himself had pitched a fit when, shortly after making detective, she'd had announced she was leaving Santa Barbara to chase a woman she'd met twice—and now Kekoa was a rising star in the LAPD who came home every night to her wife of eight years. He'd been to the wedding. It was charming. Kekoa told him she'd kneecap him if he ever made the pictures public.

_"Aw, hell. Look, you are so far gone, finish the damn bottle and sleep it off."_

"Come on! Just answer the question."

 _"I didn't,"_ Kekoa said. _"You want to know more than that, you can call me back tomorrow."_

"Some friend you are," he said.

 _"Lassiter, you just admitted you consider me a friend. Drink a glass of water and go to bed."_ She hung up on him.

"I have friends," he told the dialtone. He had O'Hara, didn't he? He could call her. He should call her. His thumb hovered over her contact entry, and then he remembered—professional. Moving on. Right.

Out of petulance, he drank another glass of Scotch instead of the prescribed water and passed out on the couch with the muted TV on PBS. He woke up at five the next morning with a mouth full of fur and the aching sensation that someone along the way had made an earth-shattering mistake.

-

Not long after the gas station killings, Vick started pushing to call in their consultants. She wanted not only Spencer and Guster, but also an outside profiler and—get this—a _fed_ to come in and offer their opinions. Surprisingly, it was O'Hara who protested; Lassiter was of the opinion that nobody, not some government stooge in a black suit and certainly not a psychic fraud, would be able to put a case together with any more haste.

"Chief, no! This is active, dangerous, organized—we know who the perps are, we just have to figure out how to catch them."

"Detective, do you have a name?" said Vick. "No? I thought not. Now I agree that the last thing we need is Mister Spencer sticking his nose into the middle of a gang war, but there's no reason he shouldn't be allowed to go over your files and interview the witnesses. We need any possible leads brought to the table."

"We're still putting together a profile of Immaculata activity in the area," O'Hara said. "I have found fifteen, _fifteen_ separate unsolved crimes that I think can be linked to them. We've identified two of our three unknowns. Annie Hua has provided a list of official and unofficial leaders in the gang infrastructure. As soon as we pinpoint the top gun, we can put out an injunction and charge all of them."

"Nevertheless, you will be working with our consultants." Although O'Hara was standing and Vick was reclined behind her desk, there was no doubt who was in charge. "Detective Lassiter, you've been unusually quiet. No protest?"

"Of course I protest," Lassiter said. "I can maybe understand working with the profiler, but you know there isn't a fed out there who knows more about gang activity in Santa Barbara than I do. And Spencer is a jackass who can't mind his own business—you bring him in on this, the next thing you know he's wandering into the middle of a chop shop asking for the Advocate. It's stupidity, but you've clearly made up your mind." He shrugged. 

"Objection noted," Vick said. "Call him. I'll set up the other consultations. Keep me up to date."

O'Hara stomped away. Lassiter followed at a more leisurely rate, content to let her thrash out their mutual frustration. Whatever else had been damaged in their song-and-dance, they hadn't lost that strange, shared connection, the sympathy of purpose and feeling and, yes, competition that let them work so well as a unit. They were both angry; let her swear and storm. It was her turn.

She was slamming her phone back on the hook when he walked up to her desk. "Shawn isn't picking up."

"Did you try Guster?"

"No, Carlton, because I'm completely stupid. Of course I tried Gus! Ugh, they're probably at that community picnic City Hall is throwing."

Lassiter made a decision and therefore a concession. "We were planning on driving over to the safehouse to talk to Hua anyway. We can swing by the picnic on the way, talk to Spencer. Eat a hotdog."

"Eat a hotdog," she said. "You want to eat a hotdog."

"Hey, I'm not picky about my organ meats."

"How do you—no, you know what, that's fine." She shoved her cellphone into her pocket—he still wasn't sure she managed that in the fitted skirts and slacks she preferred to wear—and stood up. "You really think Annie can tell us more?"

"She can tell us who her inside contact is, for one thing," he said, and followed O'Hara out to the car. "'Can't reveal his name,' my ass. And we're stuck playing a damn game of telephone because he'll only use _her_ as a go-between?" 

"They're friends," said O'Hara. "Or I think they are—she's clearly comfortable with him in a way she isn't with the other Immaculata members she mentions. She's probably afraid for him, and as long as we want her—and him—to keep feeding us information..."

"Don't tell me. We play nice."

"You can be taught." They climbed into the car, and Lassiter swung them around towards the picnic grounds. O'Hara was antsy, still wound up from talking to Vick. At the next stoplight, Lassiter reacher over and dug around in the glove compartment until he found the unopened roll of Lifesavers he'd bought for her. He was careful not to brush against her knees in the process.

"Here," he said, and dropped it in her lap.

"Thanks," she said, and went to work peeling it open. Her fingernails were painted a melon pink that reminded him of sherbert, although they had started to chip, and she looked...tired. She looked as tired as he felt.

The park's lots were full, so they parked a few blocks away and hoofed it. Above, the sun was high and bright, the sky cloudless and free of any threat.

Lassiter had the fleeting thought that if he took off running now, he could be out of the state by three and out of the country by dinner. Or, hell, why bother with that? He could live in the woods, off the grid, just a man and the forest. Man versus forest. Man versus nature. Man versus squirrel.

"There they are," said O'Hara. Guster and his cohort were lurking beside the barbeque pit, where the deputy mayor was serving up hotdogs and hamburgers. Behind them was strung an atrocious banner that Lassiter didn't bother reading. "Looks like you'll get your hotdog."

"If they've left any," Lassiter retorted. O'Hara (probably) have him the obligatory eyeroll; it was difficult to tell through her dark glasses. 

"Jules, Lassie—welcome to my abode," Spencer said. "Were you overcome by a passion for picnics, or is this a business call?" He scooped up a bun and a patty, dropped them on a plate, and presented the sandwich to O'Hara with a flourish.

"Business call, sorry," said O'Hara. "You guys weren't picking up your phones, so we thought we'd pick you up here. The Chief has a new case for you." She started looking around for condiments; Lassiter handed her the mustard.

"New case? This wouldn't be that super secret gang murder, would it?" said Guster.

"It would be, although Vick's going to put some limits on your involvement," said O'Hara.

"No fieldwork," said Lassiter. "No poking your noses where they don't belong, no 'accidentally' stumbling into a witness, no illegal seizure of evidence. Do not go sniffing around. This is dangerous. Am I clear?"

Spencer bit into his hotdog with relish, chewed, swallowed, and said, "Down, boy."

Out of the blue, Lassiter was struck by a sudden urge to visit the far side of the grounds. He took a hotdog with him. "Carlton?" O'Hara said. "Carlton—ugh, never mind. Shawn, he's serious. You don't follow the rules, you don't get paid. Vick means it." Her voice faded out of earshot after that; Lassiter and his lunch found a shady, _deserted_ tree, and occupied the next ten minutes quite nicely.

There must have been three hundred people there, and at least half of them were kids knee-high or shorter. He found himself fighting the urge to herd them all together and build a fence around them; this many kids, this many strange faces, who knew what would happen. Crowds. He _hated_ crowds.

From the jut of her hip and of her chin, he suspected O'Hara was scolding her boyfriend. Spencer made an outrageous gesture, she put her hands on her hips, his body language softened, and he appeared to say something genuinely contrite. She caved. He slid an arm around her waist and pulled her to his side, and for the endless span between one heartbeat and the next, she allowed it; but then she shook him off, said something to Guster, and reached into a cooler.

Lassiter's opinion on Spencer was complex enough without adding O'Hara to the mix. Spencer was a mess, and maybe that was the root of Lassiter's resentment—he knew what it was to screw up just about every relationship you had, to act with complete disregard for acceptable behavior, to burn your life to the ground and salt the earth behind. In his weaker moments, Lassiter might even cop to liking Spencer, on the rare occasions when the idiot stopped prank-calling him long enough to act like a real human being instead of a caricature from Mad Magazine. He had some idea of what O'Hara might see in Spencer, too, and more than a notion of what Spencer saw in O'Hara. 

So he kept on watching them; it was something like penance.

Julio Zavala found him there as he was licking ketchup from his fingers. "Carlton," Zavala said, "didn't expect to see you here."

"I was in the mood to frolic with kindergartners," Lassiter said, deadpan. "Out with the family?"

"Yeah, Kennedy's flying kites with her nephews, but Isabel's right over—Isabel! Izzy, come over here!"

A dark-haired girl with fresh mud on her face broke off from the pack and trotted over. She was, by Lassiter's inexperienced reckoning, seven or thereabouts; the smear of mud continued down her front, broke briefly across her shirt, and then resumed down her pants and the front of her shins.

"This is my daughter, Isabel. Iz, can you say hello to Detective Lassiter? He's an old friend of Papi's."

Isabel Zavala did not take her father at his word. She surveyed Lassiter herself, solemn-eyed and direct; he did her the courtesy of taking off his sunglasses and folding them into a pocket.

And then, finally, she stuck out her hand. Lassiter shook it.

"Hello," she said.

"Hello," Lassiter said, wary but charmed in spite of himself.

"Do you have a gun?" she said, which he'd expected; kids always wanted to know about the gun.

"I do," he said. 

"Okay," she said. Zavala snorted and then covered with an inelegant cough. "Do you get to ride a horse?"

"Uhh...no," said Lassiter. "Not for the job, anyway."

She thought about that while she scraped a fleck of mud off her cheek. "If I was a detective, I'd be a cowboy detective," she said.

"A cowboy detective, huh?" said O'Hara, who appeared at his elbow. "That's a lot of work—herding cattle, riding in rodeos, and catching bad guys."

"Matt Dillon does it. Who are you? Do you have a gun?"

"Matt Dillon?" said Lassiter.

"She's been watching a lot of TV Land," said Zavala. "Instead of _doing her homework."_

"Ah," said Lassiter. "Isabel, this is my partner, Detective O'Hara. She also has a gun."

"Okay," said Isabel. "Hi. I like your hair. Do you get to ride a horse?"

"Nice to meet you, Isabel. Thank you, I like your hair, too, and no, I don't get to ride a horse. I do get a siren to put on my car, though. Do you play soccer?"

The kid lit up like a firecracker. She did play soccer (since last year), was the best goalie in the whole school (maybe an exaggeration, but Zavala appeared to take her seriously), planned on playing in the World Cup (that was the Fall Classic of soccer, Lassiter was vaguely aware), and had a poster of some soccer player on her wall (Lassiter missed the name).

"But you know what would be really cool?" she finished. "Soccer with _horses."_

"Polo?" said Lassiter, and the youngest Zavala shot him a look of such withering scorn that he recoiled.

"No," she said. "Horse soccer."

"You mean you're playing soccer on horseback, or that the horses are playing soccer?" said Lassiter.

"I like both of those," said Isabel. "Both. Definitely both."

"Okay, kid, why don't you get back to your team," Zavala said. "Stay where I can see you." She was already off, racing back to the flock of kids, but she turned around and waved to show she'd heard.

"She's adorable," said O'Hara. "How old is she?"

"Seven," Zavala said. "Breaks my heart every day. How's the case?"

He didn't need to specify which. Lassiter scowled. "Just great."

"It's been frustrating for all of us," O'Hara cut in. It wasn't entirely accurate to call O'Hara _diplomatic_ , but at least she didn't seem to actively offend as many people as Lassiter did. "We're making some headway now. Actually, we should probably..."

"Corral the mediums?" Lassiter suggested. "Shanghai the ghost-hunters? Round up the man-children?"

"Get going," said O'Hara. "We should probably get going. Doctor Zavala, it was so nice to see you again."

"What she said," added Lassiter. Zavala rolled his eyes and waved them off before going in search of his wife. They watched as he approached one of the taller kite-flyers and greeted her with a tug on the ponytail.

"Are they riding with us?" said Lassiter.

"They are," she said.

"Fine," he said, but that still didn't explain how he ended up with Guster beside him riding shotgun while O'Hara and Spencer cozied up in the backseat. They were probably _necking_ back there. It was absolutely intolerable. He adjusted his rearview, caught a flash of Spencer's mouth moving—his words were, thankfully, not audible—while O'Hara gazed at him, and readjusted the mirror so it showed the car's roof instead. Less useful for driving, sure, but far better for his health.

Guster said something. He didn't hear that, either.

"I SAID," shouted Guster, "CAN WE TURN THE MUSIC DOWN?"

"NO," said Lassiter. Some people had no appreciation for a well-played fife.

Guster reached for the radio. Lassiter glared. Guster countered by setting a trembling finger against the dial. Lassiter slapped his hand away. Guster slapped back and, in a surprise rear attack, cut the volume in half with his other hand.

"Oh thank _God_ ," said Spencer. "Who is 'Johnny Whistletrigger,' anyway? He sounds like a rascal of a scamp, but you cannot tell me—"

Lassiter turned the music back up.

The safehouse where Hua was stashed had been owned by the department since before Lassiter had been a rookie. It was a split-level of atrocious yellow brick on the northern outskirts of Santa Barbara. Hua was guarded by a patrol officer 24/7 and was under strict instructions to stay put and tell no one where she was, no, not even her BFF. 

Lassiter parked in the gravel driveway, shut off the engine, and engaged the kiddie locks.

"Let me repeat that you are not going to run roughshod over this woman," he said. "You will share all information you... _glean_. You will not leave here with delusions of bringing down the sum total of organized criminal groups in southern California yourselves; if you do, I will not be rescuing your sorry asses. You will behave like professionals. You will follow the guidelines laid down by the Chief. Are we clear?" 

"My ass is never sorry," said Spencer. "Anything we need to know about her?"

"She's nineteen," said O'Hara. "College student, scared out of her mind. She started running with Immaculata when she was fifteen, working in a chop shop—she's in the autoshop program at SBCC. She's still in close contact with at least one active gang member, although she has yet to reveal the name of her source. Her information's been good so far, though." 

"But—" said Spencer.

"We've got it," said Guster.

"Gus—"

"We have got it," Guster repeated.

McNab was the officer on rotation; Lassiter, who was aware Annie Hua might still resent him for the time he showed up on her doorstep and shouted accusations at her, however true those accusations might have been, loitered in the background, listening with half an ear while he shot the bull with McNab. The man was a good officer, although his relentless optimism put even O'Hara to shame.

"She's been jumpy, you know?" McNab reported. "I don't think anyone even knows about her, but she acts like someone's going to storm the house any minute. Is that usual?"

Lassiter thought it over while Spencer went into a seizure that looked like an otter trying to tapdance. "It's not unusual," he finally allowed. "No telling if she's just high-strung or if she has reason to believe they'll be out for retribution. Probably a little of column A, little of column B." He scooped a handful of peanuts up from the bowl on the table and tossed it back. Across the hall, Hua stood up from the couch and stormed down the half-flight of stairs into the basement. Spencer followed. Guster sank back into the couch. O'Hara joined Lassiter in the kitchen.

"Well?" he said.

"Nothing new," said O'Hara. "She still won't give up her contact, but since Julio's corroborating a lot of what she has given us, I still don't think we want to browbeat her."

"Hey, five minutes alone in an interrogation room and I could—"

"I know you could, Carlton, but then what would we have? A name. Right now we have a more-or-less direct pipeline into current activities."

He was aware he'd drifted closer to her; he was standing directly in front of her now, still chewing on his peanuts, staring down at her as she stared back up at him. She never had trouble meeting his eyes. "And nothing she's told us has paid off—"

 _"Yet,"_ O'Hara stressed. "All I'm saying is, let's give it a little more time. Another week."

"We haven't even identified _one_ confirmable Immaculata member," he grumbled—and that was despite combing half-a-dozen prisons and working with the Support Division's crime analysis gurus. Lassiter was ready to slap the handcuffs on _someone_. 

"We don't know who set that bomb, we don't know who kidnapped those kids, we don't know who killed those two addict yahoos at the gas station—"

"Carlton," she said. From the back of the kitchen, McNab coughed.

"Fine," said Lassiter. "Fine. But—"

"I know," said O'Hara. "I hear you, loud and clear. Hey, peanuts!"

Lassiter snatched the bowl away. "Don't eat them all."

"I won't," she said. "Promise, come on, Carlton, I'm still hungry." She made a grab, and he graciously held the bowl above her head. It had a couple of pieces of salt stuck to the bottom.

"Oh, you wanna play like that?" said O'Hara, and put up her fists. "Bring it."

"What are you gonna do, punch me down to size?" said Lassiter, smirking. "You're telling me that you, Detective First Grade O'Hara, would willingly put your partner out of commission for a couple of lousy nuts—"

"They're legumes," said Spencer. "Is this was Santa Barbara's finest do with their spare time?"

Lassiter set the bowl down and shoved his hands in his pockets. "Spencer. Anything useful?"

"Oh, I don't know," Spencer said. "But I am picking up a very specific vibration...you said Josefina de la Cruz had a brother?"

"Has," corrected O'Hara. "He lives with his mother. You're telling me that he knows Hua? He can't be much older than fifteen or sixteen, he's still in high school."

"I'm telling you that he's her contact." Spencer picked a peanut from the bowl, flipped it into the air, and caught it in his mouth. "You don't think that finding out his associates had kidnapped, tortured, and killed his little sister would be enough for him to have a change of heart?"

"Accusing him of being involved with the gang that murdered his sister is big, Spencer. Before we go around ruining his mother's life, you better make damn sure you're certain."

"Or..." said O'Hara. "What if we don't make any contact with the de la Cruz kid? Let's set up a tail."

"Yeah, I'm going to leave that to the aforementioned finest," said Spencer. "Meanwhile, I will be at home, not stuck in a car for eight hours. Gus? Gus! Time to take off, toots."

"We have discussed this before, Shawn, and you don't get to call me 'toots!'" Guster shouted from the other room.

"Boys," said O'Hara, "we're going now." As she passed Lassiter on the way to the door, she gave him a brief pat on his tie. "That goes for you, too, dollface."

Bemused, he followed her out, hoping all the while that no hint of adoration was revealed in his expression.

-

They set up a three-shift watch on the de la Cruz kid; Lassiter signed himself and O'Hara up for the four to twelve shift on a Friday night, figuring that if the boy was going to try anything, it'd be then. O'Hara arrived at the station wearing jeans and about five layers of jackets. "What?" she said. "I wanted to be comfortable."

"And prepared for a freak blizzard?" he said.

"I think I'm coming down with a cold. Don't make that face, I've been washing my hands."

"If you need to be home in bed—"

"Don't you dare go there, Carlton," she said. She'd also brought a bag of chips and a couple of bottles of water, along with the usual sheaf of paperwork, cold cases, and notes on Immaculata that accompanied them to these kinds of low-risk waiting games. She liked to listen to music, too, although Lassiter preferred talk radio—he'd even consent to NPR if 'A Prairie Home Companion' was playing, although that that did open the door to O'Hara making fun of him. Which was fine; she seemed to like mostly atrocious eighties pop, so he was more than capable of returning her crap in kind.

They traded off with the previous shift outside of the trailer park where de la Cruz lived with his mom. Nothing special to report so far—the kid went to school, worked a couple of afternoons a week as a stockboy at a grocery store, and hung out with his cousins. He seemed unusually sober for a teenager, maybe, but that could be chalked up to the recent death of his sister.

It was past twilight when they polished off the bag of chips. O'Hara chugged half of her water, capped it, and pulled a leg up underneath her. "I'm starting to think Shawn was wrong," she said.

From their parking place on a low crest of a hill, half-hidden behind a grove of trees, they had a clear line of sight to the de la Cruz's front door. The kid had gone straight inside after school and hadn't come out once all night. "What makes you think that?" said Lassiter.

"Where's the evidence?" said O'Hara. "It doesn't stack up. He had a tattoo, but that doesn't mean anything, and we both know it. He's sweet. He helps his mom out, maintains his grades, shows up for his job on time."

"We're pulling the tail if we don't have anything by Monday."

"Good," she said.

Lassiter shoved his seat back and stretched out his legs as far as he could; one of his calves was starting to cramp. "Maybe he wound up involved accidentally."

"How?" said O'Hara. "You mean he saw something he shouldn’t have?"

"Could be. But I wonder if he is involved because—look, Hua took matters into her own hands, although she turned after she was in too deep. Maybe this kid sees his sister get snatched and decides to do something about it himself."

"...I don't think he saw her get picked up," O'Hara said, but slowly, like she was trying to fit together puzzle pieces in the dark, "but what if _after_ she dies, he finds out and thinks he's going to go after the people who took her? God, though, that's—nobody actually thinks like that."

"He's a kid, O'Hara. And he's angry. It doesn't have to make sense if he wants revenge."

"It fits," she said. "At least for what we know of his personality. We still don't have any evidence that Shawn's right about him being in touch with Annie, though."

He shouldn't ask. He knew he shouldn't ask. Absolutely nothing good would come of asking—

"Something rotten in Denmark?" said Lassiter.

She was silent, staring out the windshield at the spring evening. The stars—or what little of them could be seen—were starting to appear, a spray of delicate lights crossing the void from eternity. Her hair was pulled back low on her neck, and her hands were quiet in her lap; there was a smudge on the right one, probably of gunpowder. Gunpowder, and sweet, fragrant fruits, sweat, vanilla, and anise—these were the scents he associated with her.

"O'Hara—"

"No," she said. "Do you really want to know?"

"Yes," he said, because he'd never been a very good judge of what was best for him.

"It's..." She broke off again. Lassiter shifted, trying to ease the tension that was starting to build in his lower back. "It's...fine," she said. "It's light and flirty and there's no—it's really hard to talk about this with you."

He cleared his throat; his voice, when it came out, was gruff. "Sorry."

"Carlton, it is so far from you fault that—we aren't connecting. Or it is your fault, but it's mostly _my_ fault. Shawn's holding back, but I can't blame him for that when I'm holding back, too. He never..."

She caught her full lower lip between her teeth. "Never what?" prompted Lassiter.

"It never feels like he's honest with me," O'Hara said. "Which is stupid, it's just a feeling and I have _no_ reason to suspect him of anything, it's not like I think he's cheating on me or something, it's just—it's just a feeling."

Lassiter cleared his throat again, opened his mouth, and in short order shut it again.

"How hard are you biting your tongue right now?" she asked.

He glared at her.

"Uh-huh, that's what I thought." She dipped her head to the side, popped her neck, and said, "It'll all be okay. Henry's having us over for dinner next week."

"If he criticizes you," Lassiter advised, "shoot him."

"What a perfectly sane reaction. Besides, I know you like him."

"He was...a decent cop." Below them, the street lights came on, illuminating the neat patches of grass between the trailers and the road leading into town.

"'Decent,'" said O'Hara. "High praise. What about you? Have your eye on anyone?"

Lassiter looked at her, although she didn't notice—too busy picking chip crumbs from her lap. "Yes," he said.

"Good. That's...that's great, Carlton."

He snorted and dug his shoulders into the seat, trying to get more comfortable. His holster was starting to ride up. "Think this kid's ever going to leave?"

"He might sneak out," O'Hara suggested. "I did, a time or two."

"Your brothers?" 

"Oh, they definitely helped," she said. "What we really need to know is how much these guys would go in for a revenge killing."

"Immaculata? My gut says a lot—no other reason everyone would be so close-lipped. Bribery only takes you so far, but threaten to kill someone's family, hit them where they're weak, that's power."

"Would Julio know?"

"Maybe," said Lassiter. "The model they operate on is different enough that it's still guesswork. I can call him, though." He dug his phone out of his pants pockets and found that the battery had died. "Aw, crap."

"Here, use mine," said O'Hara. "I'm going to go stretch for a minute, be right back."

"Stay by the car—" he started to say, but she gave him an O'Hara special strong enough to melt paint off a wall, and he shut it.

He punched in the passcode for her phone and thumbed through her contacts; she had Zavala's number programmed in, and he dialed it up and waited. To his surprise, Zavala picked up. He had nothing concrete to say on the techniques Immaculata used to control its associates, although he agreed that they would likely be willing to carry through any threats they made to those who turned traitor on them. 

Before he hung up, on a whim, he asked, "You haven't heard of a figure called 'The Advocate,' have you?"

 _"I..."_ Zavala's voice went muffled as he shouted something in an eminently paternal tone. _"Sorry about that, my daughter decided to take up drumming."_ There was a cymbal crash in the background. _"I've heard rumors. Not very good rumors."_

"Anything in connection with—?"

_"There was something...a few years before I was picked up, there was some big fight about a money-making venture. I heard that name tossed around. My uncle wanted to back out—look, I'm not trying to defend him, he did some terrible things, but he thought that getting involved with an outfit that did what this person wanted to do was crossing a line."_

"What was the venture?"

_"It was a long time ago, and I don't have the full context—"_

"Tell me anyway," Lassiter said.

 _"They were talking about selling kids,"_ Zavala said. _"Listen, man, I don't remember Immaculata coming up in that conversation, but you asking about that name now—and I read the papers. It might be a coincidence. It might not."_

"Yeah, well." Lassiter thought about apologizing for interrupting the man's night with invasive questions about memories best left forgotten, but the words caught in his throat. "Thanks all the same."

 _"No problem,"_ said Zavala. _"Don't go name-dropping me and you can call whenever you want."_

"Thanks, _professor,"_ Lassiter cracked, and hung up. He sat there for a while, running his thumb over O'Hara's phone idly while he thought about what Zavala had said. Chasing ghosts was what it felt like they were doing, chasing phantoms and monsters that could magic away a trail as if it had never existed. He picked out O'Hara in the rearview mirror; she was stretching with her arms over her head. She wasn't going to want to hear this any more than he wanted to tell it.

He looked down at O'Hara's phone. By accident, he'd flicked open her messages. His finger was on the button to lock the phone when he realized that the only thing in her inbox were texts from _him_.

O'Hara was tidy. He knew she deleted or archived her emails as soon as she was finished with them, and he had no reason to suspect that she didn't do the same with her texts. She'd saved, though, what looked like every message he'd ever sent her. Dates, phone numbers, reminders, arrangements to meet her or pull a file, wishes of luck for her court appearances, pleas for coffee. _Ev. room 'misplaced' what I need again. Vick wants to see us about a B &E. I just saw that stupid infomercial for the cat toy again. Where's the Danvers file? Don't text me. See you there in ten, don't forget to fill up the tank. What do the Angels and a possum have in common? This meeting is never going to end. Found a good deal on ammo, sending you the link. Seriously, O'Hara, this song is your favorite?_

The sound of the car door opening made him jolt in his seat like he'd touched an electric fence. O'Hara dropped into the passenger side, picked a leaf out of her hair, and dropped it outside before shutting the door again. "What's the word?" she said. "I know it's a long shot—"

"O'Hara."

"But right now we could use a good long shot, you know what I mean? This reminds me of that case last year with the—"

"O'Hara," he repeated. 

"Carlton?" she said.

He looked down, grimaced, looked back up. Her brows were arched expectantly. "I apologize," he said. "I didn't mean to go looking."

"Looking at...?" she said, and he dropped her phone in her lap. She took it in both hands and bowed her head over the screen, which still showed her saved messages. 

"I wasn't paying attention," Lassiter said. "Not that that's any kind of an excuse—"

"Carlton, it's fine," she said. Her hair had escaped, and its fall partially obscured his view of her face, but he thought—he thought she might be smiling. "Don't worry about it."

"I..." He looked away from her and swallowed, then drummed his fingers against the steering wheel. Finally he said, "Whatever you say, O'Hara."

She was looking through her phone still; he offered her the privacy he hadn't before, and kept his eyes trained out the windshield instead of on her face. After a moment she sighed and shifted; putting her phone away again, probably, and pulling back her hair.

They spent the rest of their watch talking about the case; Lassiter relayed what Zavala had shared, and in fact O'Hara wasn't happy to hear it.

"I hate this," she said. "I hate it. I know it is—so, _so_ stupid, because we see horrible things every day, but this is insane and it's terrible and I wish I could say that I don't understand how anyone could do this to other human beings, to _children_ , but I've seen enough that I can understand it, and I hate that."

Lassiter grunted. What could he say to that? He hated it, too; despite the impression he sometimes gave, the darker parts of police work reviled him as much as they did O'Hara. They saw, over and over again, that dark underbelly—the things that lurked not in shadows but in people. 

"We'll get them, O'Hara," he said. "We'll get them."

"Do you really believe that?"

He _had_ to believe that. "Sure I do. Why else would I fold myself in two to spend hours staring at a rectangle with only a woman from Florida for company?"

"Miami is not Florida," she shot back.

"It's in Florida, what more do you want? I'm sorry, are you from the Miami in _Scotland?"_

"At least I'm not descended from a man named 'Muscum.'"

"That," he said, "is a family tradition. I fully expect that my son will be called 'Muscum Jebediah,' so help me God."

Her laugh wasn't half as scornful as she tried to make it sound, and it was a far cry from the melancholy anger of a few moments ago. "You have got to be kidding," she said. "Like I would let any kid of mine—look, there's Young and Olivier."

He'd already seen them in his rearview; they were in a plain, unmarked car, and neither were in uniform. Mikkel Olivier he didn't know well, but Olivier's partner, Nadine Young, was one of the few SBPD employees who could match Lassiter on the shooting range—present company excluded. "They're working the night shift?"

"Temporarily," said O'Hara. "I've been tapping Nadine or Buzz to help out on this thing when I can. After what happened with Drimmer..."

"Right," he said. "You trust her?" McNab's loyalty was beyond question.

"I trust her."

"Good enough for me. Hungry?"

"Starving," O'Hara admitted, and then wiped her nose on her sleeve. "Don't look so disgusted. I forgot to bring tissues, okay?"

"Yuck," said Lassiter, with feeling.

She rolled her eyes and then rolled down her window when Young pulled into the space beside them. "Hey, Nadine!" said O'Hara. "All quiet on this front."

"Thank God I brought a book," said Young, holding it up. Lassiter was intrigued to see Doris Kearns Goodwin. 

"I don't see why you get to read," Olivier said from the passenger seat.

"Uh, because I won the bet?" said Young. "Aw, come on, I'm sorry. I'll read out loud, how's that?"

"Please don't," said Olivier.

"We're gonna head out," said O'Hara. "Call one of us if anything goes down?"

"I don't want to bother you—" protested Young.

"Seriously? You'd be doing me a favor, I swear," said O'Hara. "Promise."

"If you say so, Juliet. All right, you guys go home and get some sleep. Mikky and I got this."

"See you later!" said O'Hara, and waved. Lassiter twitched a couple of fingers in their direction, started the engine, and pulled away. He kept the headlights off until they were on the main road—probably an unnecessary precaution, but he took as many of those as possible.

"City Diner?" he suggested.

O'Hara yawned and stifled it against her shoulder. "Yeah, sounds good."

The diner was busier than Lassiter was used to find it at the late hour, and then he remembered—weekend. O'Hara held the door for him; he grabbed it above her head and let her duck inside first, afraid she'd nod off at her post otherwise.

"I'm going to the bathroom, be right back," she said, which gave him the automatic advantage of the seat that put his back against the wall. He slid into their booth and used the side of his hand to push a couple of crumbs off the table, and then dropped his head to rub at the bridge of his nose. He hoped O'Hara hadn't fallen asleep on the toilet—that would be humiliating for everyone involved.

He almost didn't notice when the waitress approached; she gave him a friendly if impersonal smile and scratched at a patch of red ink on one of her hands. Student? Or—no, students mostly used computers these days. Mother, that had to be it, drawing with her kid. She had a sticker of some cartoon animal on her name badge.

"Ready to order, hon?" she said. 

"Coffee—no decaf. We'll need some extra sugars. Breakfast platter for me, over hard."

The woman made a note and then, pen posed, asked, "Know what your lady friend wants?"

Lassiter thought about that, and realized that, yes, he did know. He knew exactly what she wanted.

"Belgian waffles," he said. "And can you give her some extra syrup?"

-

The stakeouts proved fruitless. Vick put a stop to them, citing a waste of resources, although Lassiter still had a nagging feeling that something was up with the de la Cruz kid. Could be general teenage antics, could be something else. He started a rotating duty of cathartic chores to take out his frustration, which mostly involved puttering around the house.

His current domicile had a lot going for it. He'd picked it out himself, for one, without any input from Victoria—the place he'd lived before O'Hara had accidentally invited a few dozen repeat offenders to turn up on his doorstep had been the house they'd bought together, and it wasn't completely unpleasant to have a fresh start. The new place was set back a couple of yards from the road, too, and there was enough foliage that he could at least pretend he had privacy. It was also a one-story, and O'Hara had once mentioned that she thought one-stories were cozier. _Not_ that O'Hara's opinion mattered—

At any rate: The front door could do with a fresh coat of paint, so he after Vick pulled her "waste of resources" schtick, he took a long lunch hour and went to the hardware store to look at samples. He ended up buying a semi-gloss brick red and a couple of rolls of painter's tape. Made him think of the afternoon he'd spent helping O'Hara paint her living room, and how thoroughly he was failing at moving on.

There was a package waiting on his desk when he got back to the station. He twisted to read the address as he hung up his suit jacket; there was no return label, and the block printing was in a firm, nondescript hand. It was made out with both his name and O'Hara's, care of the Santa Barbara Police Department. His mind, as he slit the tape with a pocket knife and folded back the flaps of the box, was more on home improvement, search warrants for teenagers, and dinner than it was on mysterious packages; but then he looked inside.

There was no note, only a rosary, and taped to the cardboard beside it, a black folding phone.

"Oh _shit_ ," said Lassiter. "O'Hara." When she didn't appear, he shouted for her. "O'Hara!"

"What, Carlton!" She was across the station, talking to Spencer and Allen at the front desk. He picked up the box and shoved across the aisles, paying no attention to the officers he cut off. She met him halfway, in front of the desk that had been Drimmer's and now belonged to—he couldn't remember who. He couldn't think about anything but O'Hara, and the box, and what was in it.

"Look," he said, and dropped it in front of her. It took her a little longer to catch on; she came from a long line of Presbyterians, people who had never uttered a Hail Mary, but realization bloomed across her face.

"You think…"

"I know," he said, grimmer than he'd ever felt. "Allen! Who the hell left this—"

The phone rang.

O'Hara shuddered. Her eyes were wide and glassy, and her hand dropped to the pancake holster she wore at her waist. "We have to answer it," she said.

"Guys?" Oh great, Spencer. "Guys, if I may—"

The phone rang again.

"Shove it, Spencer," Lassiter barked. "O'Hara, get the tech team here NOW. McNab, find Vick. The rest of you—shut the hell up."

The phone rang a third time; Lassiter swore under his breath, ripped it free from the tape, and answered.

 _"Hello, Detective."_ The speaker was using a voice modulator of the kind that lent a flat, robotic inflection. O'Hara had returned with recording equipment already; Lassiter switched the phone to speaker and set it in the middle of the table.

_"Or should I say—Detectives. Tell me, which of you am I addressing?"_

"This is Lassiter," he said.

_"Detective Lassiter, that's grand. You and your partner, you're very astute people. You're hunting me. I can deal with...hunts. What I find unacceptable is how many of my former associates seem willing to sell you their stories."_

"Keep him talking," one of the techs hissed. Vick crowded up to the desk; Lassiter shot her a look, and she nodded.

"No chance of penance?" he said.

The voice chuckled, and the modulator rendered it as an atonal cascade of notes. _"The Protestants say that our works aren't weighed in the balance, but we both know better, don't we, Detective? Tell me, how are we saved?"_

He remembered the gas station, and the bodies on the cheap tile floor. "By grace," he said, "through faith and deed."

_"Well done. Do you know the relevant verse?"_

_Draw it out,_ the tech signaled. Spencer was bouncing on the heels of his shoes, his brow furrowed in concentration. Vick had her fist pressed to her mouth.

"'You see that a man is justified by works and not by faith alone,'" Lassiter spit out.

_"You are a good Catholic boy, aren't you. I like to think that what James means is that we earn our grace. I earn mine by tending my flock, by...advocating for them. Of course, as I tell my novitiates, they don't have to worry about God's grace, only mine. I encourage them to be creative in seeking my goodwill. I'd like to talk, though, about how you earn your grace, Detective Lassiter."_

Christ; this wasn't a gang, it was a cult. He braced himself against the desk and leaned over so that the crappy, dinged woodwork took up his whole field of vision. For all that a dozen people were packed around him, there was no sound in his ears but his own heartbeat.

"I don't know what you mean," he said.

_"Don't play coy, Detective. What precept defines you? It isn't natural for you to do right, is it, which makes it all the more remarkable that you struggle on the side of the angels. I have heard things about you, you know...I have contacts everywhere. Tell me, is Juliet in the room? Don't lie."_

"You know she is," Lassiter said.

_"I'd like you to look at her when you answer. Are you looking at her?"_

His anger was like a brand in his throat, and his shame was salt on the wound, but there was no power under heaven that could stop his eyes from seeking her out. He found that her gaze was already locked on him, and in her face there was not censure but a deep well of fortitude.

"Yes," he said.

_"Then let's hear it, Detective. How do you earn your grace?"_

There was only one answer. "I do my duty," he said.

_"You do your duty. How interesting. How...inspirational. I hope you have someone to watch your back, Detective; it really doesn't come to anything, if you don't have someone to watch your back. You've chosen a dangerous post, after all. You do your duty...there are some among my flock who could learn from your example. Poor little Annie, for one."_

Son of a _bitch_. "If you're threatening—"

 _"Talk to you later, Detective."_ A click, and then: only the dial tone.

"MOVE," O'Hara roared. "I want SWAT, I want every able-bodied officer we have, on the road to Hua and her safehouse!"

Lassiter grabbed the phone and flung it at the techs as he stormed for the door. "Get everything you can off of that, I want answers and I want them _now_. Allen, figure out who the hell left that—" O'Hara was moving with him, shoving through the crowd; there were patrol officers hot on their heels, and Lassiter popped the snap on his holster and pulled his service weapon, yanked the slide back, and let it snap into place as he followed O'Hara down the station's front steps. Once they hit the parking lot, they went for their vehicle at a flat run.

Even with sirens and an accompaniment of squad cars, the drive took ten tense minutes. O'Hara was on the radio the whole time, coordinating with Vick, trying to raise the officer on duty at the safehouse. Lassiter drove like he was in pursuit—and he was, for all that there was no tailgate out front to chase.

They pulled into the driveway well ahead of their escort, and found the front door standing open.

"Shit," said O'Hara, a woman for whom 'crap' was a strong word. "No way they're still here."

He led her low and fast across the lawn, and then let her take point through the door. Nothing in the front hall; nothing in the living room except the prone figure of one of their own, passed out on the floor and bleeding from the temple.

Lassiter bent to take the man's pulse, and finding it weak but present, mouthed to O'Hara, _He's alive._

She nodded once in acknowledgement, and then waited for him before they passed through the hall and cleared the kitchen. Nothing. The back door was standing half-open, but they left it and continued down the hall to the bedroom. Nothing. And then the bathroom. Nothing.

"She's gone," O'Hara said. "She's _gone."_

"Fuck. We really blew this one."

"Do they have security cameras—?"

"Not sure," he said, and holstered his Glock. "Out front, maybe, but if they were smart about it, it isn't going to matter. Our sole fucking witness, Jesus. We'd better let McNab know." The flashing lights of the patrol cars were throwing strange shadows on the kitchen wall, and although Lassiter's hands didn't shake, he wasn't feeling the usual loose tension of an adrenaline letdown. No; he was still angry.

"Wait," said O'Hara. She crossed to the back door, and swung it wide. There, on the back stoop, was a little statue, painted in white and pink and the brightest of blues; the figure was that of the virgin Mary, arms outstretched, a beatific expression of serenity on her miniature face.

"That's just great. Just fantastic. They left us a calling card," said Lassiter.

O'Hara leaned over to look at the thing. She looked for a long time; when she straightened, she holstered her weapon, righted her blouse, and folded her arms across her chest. She might have been comforting herself; she might have been angry.

"Carlton," she said, "we have to catch whoever did this."

"I know, O'Hara."

"No," she said. There was a fervor struck deep in her. "You don't understand. We _have_ to do this. We can't fail."

"We won't," said Lassiter.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a story about super melodramatic feelings and how much it would suck if you fell in love with your partner when regulations dictate you either keep it professional or stop working together and also how you would cope with that while still being, more or less, an adult about the whole situation, and really the entire thing is just an excuse to write pining, which is one of the best tropes ever.
> 
> Shout out to [slybrunette](http://slybrunette.tumblr.com/) and [andthenisay](http://andthenisay.tumblr.com/)! Now's probably a good time to mention that a fanmix for this story is available [here](http://8tracks.com/damalur/wait-for-it).

She was sleeping—

_—quiet in her bed, the light in the room diffuse and gray. She was warm; and she was safe; and there was no reason to leave the bed, no reason to pelt out the door before dawn. Her hair was loose on her pillow. She hadn't braided it back the night before, then. It was going to be miserably tangled when she woke up, but rather than worrying she flexed her ankles and curled her toes under, feeling loose-limbed and coiled. She hadn't worn pajamas to bed, either; the sheets were smooth against her bare back._

No. She could feel her shirt, the collar, shoes on her feet.

_The sheets were smooth against her bare back. She stretched again without opening her eyes and curled on her side, tucking her hands under her chin and pulling her knees up to her belly. The sheets were smooth and delicious against her bare legs, and from her pillow came the smell of gunpowder. It was a common scent in her world, and yet a specific one—a tang she associated with a particular person._

_Oh; she could sleep forever. Drowsy, but not exhausted, not fighting sleep but rolling with it, letting the tide wash her up on wakeful shores before it carried her back off to rest and dreams. There was purring from the basket beside the bed, too, a lower rumble under a wheezing crackle—Thumper and Flo were sleeping. And from the kitchen—_

The kitchen? Who would be in her kitchen?

_Someone was puttering in the kitchen, some early riser who'd already brewed a pot of coffee. There was no compulsion to rush out and confront an intruder, though, only that steady confidence and the sweet warmth of the blankets. She listened to the someone while she dozed; the clatter tapered off as he finished emptying the dishwasher. He poured another cup of coffee and then padded in her direction. He was wearing socks, she thought, or he was barefoot; his soft footfalls were almost lost beneath the engine of the cats' purring._

_She was calm and content, but as he drew nearer, she felt a curious anticipation growing. Her belly felt warm, and she smelled on herself a sweet, musky aroma that spoke of the night before; he pushed open the door, and the murmur of the hinges caused her thighs to clench involuntarily._

_She felt him there, in the room, and it made her aware of her skin, her toes and feet beneath the cool sheets, her bare back, her warm belly, the mounting slickness between her legs and the red flush spreading down from her face, her hands curled gentle and electric against her breasts. He set the coffee down on the nightstand on his side of the bed—it was their bed, wasn't it? There was the smell of gunpowder—and the mattress dipped as he stretched himself beside her. He was close enough that she slid a little into the depression of his body, close enough that she could feel his breath just below the base of her skull._

_And she wondered, if she turned and looked at him, what his face would look like; if she would know him, or if he would be a stranger to her._

_He didn't speak, but after leaving her to listen to the blood throbbing in her ears for too long, he reached out and settled his hand on her shoulder—just there, on the wing of her scapula. His hands were large enough to rest the palm on her shoulderblade and still curl his fingers over the curve of her shoulder. He brushed her idly with his thumb, little back-and-forth sweeps that seemed to concentrate all her feeling in that square inch of skin, and then he lifted his hand and drew back the covers and stroked down her back: slowly, measuredly, without haste, just the five points of his fingertips drawing over her spine, past her ribcage, and then to the planes at the small of her back._

_She liked the way he touched her. He touched her like—like—_

_He drew patterns there, in the dips at her waist, using her back like a canvas for lace and letters and maps and names._

Names?

_He traced the span of body between her nape and her thighs, so lightly that she felt touch less keenly than the anticipation of touch; and he breathed out against her neck, and he said, "O'Hara."_

_She murmured and arched into his hands—_

"O'Hara."

_And then she tensed and gathered herself to roll over. She would fit her face against his collarbone. She had fit her face against his collarbone before; the muscle memory was right._

"O'Hara. O'Hara? Come on, wake up." He didn't shake her. "O'Hara, don't make me break out the marching band."

Juliet stirred, murmured again, and realized that beneath her head was not the pillow that smelled of gunpowder but a desk that smelled of...desk. Ew. Desk and artificial lemon cleaner and coffee; the coffee triggered some innate instinct and she bolted upright, flinging herself upright so fast she only narrowly avoided cracking Carlton in the nose with the back of her head.

"Whoa—easy there, O'Hara," Carlton said. "You were sleeping, you're fine. It's ten-thirty."

"Ugh." Juliet pulled a face and reached up to rub at her neck. "I can't believe I fell asleep."

"No surprise, you didn't get any last night." He shoved a stack of paperwork, her stapler, and her inbox tray out of the way and made himself at home on the corner of her desk; his leg pressed against the side of her arm. Juliet knew she should move away, but she didn't.

"Neither did you," she said.

"I caught a couple of hours in the car while we were waiting for the forensics results," he said. He was probably even telling the truth—Carlton was a horrible liar, although he sometimes seemed to forget that inconvenient fact. 

"Anything new?"

"Still waiting to hear back from the feds. Vick wants to put together an injunction. I say we offer a reward to anyone willing to snitch, but we'll see what shakes down."

Juliet frowned. "We should be out there with everyone else," she said.

"We have been out there with everyone else," Carlton said, and then muttered, mostly to himself, "And if someone hadn't instituted a mandatory rotation, we'd still be out there."

"Vick has her reasons—"

"Oh, yeah?" He folded his arms over his chest, and Juliet half-recalled her dream, and the sensation of those fingers trailing down her back. "Then why don't you listen to her and _go home_ , O'Hara."

"Please, like I'm going home now," said Juliet.

"Come on, I'm serious—go catch your eight hours, Vick's going to keep us roped in here until the morning anyway, and you've been awake for days. Not gonna do Hua any good if you drop dead of exhaustion."

"Neither are you," she said critically. He looked haggard, with great dark circles under his eyes, and he needed to shave. "If I'm going home, _Carlton_ , then so are you."

He scowled and looked away. The night shift was busy around them; this was all hands on deck, as a case of such magnitude required. Between the warehouse bombing, the five linked homicides, and the kidnapping of their primary source and witness, there wasn't a single officer with the SBPD who wasn't contributing at some level. Juliet was painfully aware of the clock, though—Annie Hua had been snatched at two o'clock on a Monday, and it was now Tuesday night. 

They had the pieces. She couldn't shake the feeling that they had _all_ of the pieces, but right now those pieces amounted to...nothing. Hua, her kidnappers, and their leader were very likely long gone from Santa Barbara. Carlton thought Annie was dead, probably within the first twenty hours, but Juliet didn't agree. Annie had been taken not only in retribution for her own actions, but also as a warning—no, as a threat, both to anyone who wanted to turn on Immaculata and to Juliet and her partner. They'd make a public example.

"Fine," Carlton said. He was still glaring in the direction of Officer Young and her partner, who were sorting through statements. "But you don't come in until eight—"

"Six," said Juliet.

"Seven—"

"And you don't get to sneak in early, and you'll eat something other than a microwave dinner."

"Fine," he said again. "Come on, I'll drive—" He broke off, and she watched him remember that they didn't do that anymore, that they didn't do any of that anymore—not the carpooling, not the long weekend runs, not the coffee on Sunday mornings as they talked through the work of the last week.

"Nevermind," he said.

"Carlton—"

"Forget it, O'Hara. When you see Spencer, tell him—forget it." He shoved away from her desk and retreated to his alcove; Juliet didn't wait to walk out with him, didn't wait for anyone, just gathered her keys and left.

Flo and Thumper circled her like sharks as soon as she got home; she stroked them both, made her apologies, dumped some food in clean bowls and served it. She felt like an automaton, like a clockwork woman, as she took off her shoes and stripped away her clothes. Her weariness was so overpowering that taking a shower was more taxing than running down a perp, but she struggled through—she'd been wearing the same clothes for forty hours, and the smell of her own sweat was starting to offend even her.

When she crawled into bed, her hair was still wet. She blacked out almost immediately, but her sleep was restless and her dreams were dreams of searching, not the comforting illusions she'd dreamed at the station, and she woke four hours later. There was a thump, and then a low gurgle; her next-door neighbors were running their dishwasher.

In the sanctuary of her own bed, she stared at the ceiling and let her mind unfold. _Tell Spencer,_ Carlton had said, as if he'd expected her to—go home to Shawn? But she lived alone. Shawn was a distraction, a distraction that made her laugh and brought her creamsicles and understood what it was to be the...not _partner_ , _partner_ wasn't the right word...the boyfriend of a law enforcement officer. Shawn understood the culture. Shawn was not the endpoint; he was a stepping stone, but after Shawn there was supposed to be another boyfriend, and then another one after that, marching in a safe procession until she found a man with whom she was appropriately compatible.

The whole business of moving on felt like a checklist; she had yet to discover anything in her that yearned for that march of dating, flirtation, and safety that ended in only an echo of true union.

Union... 

There was that phone call, the one the Advocate had made. They'd put together a profile of him, and he was—as Carlton had said—as much a cult head as a gang leader. He expected immense devotion and complete obedience from his followers, and both promised and delivered swift punishment if he was disobeyed. She thought...she thought for that reason that Immaculata would be small; there wouldn't be many people willing to demonstrate that kind of dogmatic loyalty. It also explained why they'd made temporary pacts or even more lasting alliances with other gangs. Small meant less manpower, but more control. And with someone intelligent at the head of the body, even a small group could be used with efficacy. 

Why recruit teenagers, though? Street gangs typically preyed on adolescents, but Immaculata didn't function like a street gang—their goal didn't seem to be domination through numbers, but rather prosperity through secrecy. Annie Hua was young, but she was a gifted mechanic; they'd be able to make money off of her, if they knew how to use her.

At the foot of the bed, one of the cats stretched. Juliet flung back the covers and padded to her closet. Her running shoes were muddy; she dressed in the dark, pulled back her still-damp tangle of hair, carried them to the door, and sat on the front step to put them on. At this late hour, the streets were quiet. As a cop and as a woman, she knew better than most the danger of running alone after dark, but she was also a woman and a cop, and sometimes she wanted empty streets and roadside lights. She'd also had years of training in Krav Maga and could demonstrate with extreme prejudice why anyone who marked her as an easy target because of her height and hair color was wrong.

Back when she and Carlton were the kind of partners who carpooled to work, they'd gone running together regularly. Juliet liked shorefront roads or sidewalks, Carlton liked trails and the woods; neither was opposed to the other's preference, so they'd tried a lot of new courses, a lot of new routes. They'd done a couple of 10k races together, too, and even a half-marathon, a massive one for California law enforcement agents, where they'd put in a respectable time, even if they'd lost more than a handful of minutes shoving at each other and cracking insults as they jostled for the lead. After the first few miles, though, they'd settled into an easy pace, running in tandem and with a loose silence between them.

And now it was dark, and Juliet was running alone.

She found herself dwelling on the phone call. The phone call: too many clues, and too little. There was the voice modulator—their black hat had to have a distinctive voice, one that gave away some identifying quality, or one that was known to them. Smoker? Accent? No, they'd have heard traces of an accent. Something in the tone, then, not in the words themselves.

She dodged a pot hole, spit. Ran harder.

The fascination with Catholicism, that was interesting. Maybe they should be looking for a former priest—or someone ejected from seminary, that would fit the profile. A megalomaniac. _They don't have to concern themselves with God's will, only mine._ There was a righteous streak there, but it was paired with a wry self-awareness Juliet didn't usually associate with the blindly faithful.

Sweat was beading on her forehead; a trickle of it ran down the side of her face. She swiped it away, huffed out a breath, and pushed off harder. Put her back into it. Drove her thighs, jammed her feet to the pavement and sprang off again so quickly she was like air, not really touching the ground at all.

And then there was the fixation with Carlton. The Advocate had _known_ him, or something of him—he'd understood what buttons to press. Carlton had been livid at the command to recite verse and chapter, and incandescent at the instruction to look at Juliet. _How do you earn your grace?_ And Carlton had looked at her and answered, _I do my duty._ That had been his answer, and while it had resonated in Juliet, deep in her bones and in the core of her, the places where she believed most deeply in herself, she'd wondered if it would be her answer, too.

_I do my duty._

The wind was against her now, and the road was beginning to slope uphill. She rolled her shoulders and settled in for the long haul. It was hard to keep tempo on an upward drive like this one, but she had the size of it, and the knack for hard work that disguised itself as talent.

_I hope you have someone to watch your back; it really doesn't come to anything, if you don't have someone to watch your back._

That had been a reference to Juliet herself, hadn't it? It couldn't be anything else. But it was such an odd statement, echoing the words she'd chosen. It was like the Advocate had known the nameless thing between them despite their best efforts to break it apart.

Or it was just another translucent effort to get Carlton angry. More likely; he had a temper, and if he was angry enough, he flew into attack mode and started making mistakes. Juliet, who had something of a temper herself—

No. Wait, she told herself, back up. Those weren't an echo of the words she had used, they were the _exact_ words she had used twice before. The first time had been months ago, when she'd gone over to Carlton's house in the middle of the night so they could talk themselves down from fracturing their partnership entirely. She'd said—what had she said? _"I need to be the one out there watching your back. I need that to be me."_

They'd been alone, though, and Juliet suspected that Carlton swept his house pretty regularly for listening devices, paranoid as he was. That left the second occasion, after the warehouse bombing; they'd been standing alone by their desks, looking at the huddle of witnesses across the station. _"I told you I needed to have your back. If I don't have your back, what's the point?"_

The station was bugged. The station had to be bugged—someone had gotten the package with the phone to Carlton's desk, after all, and a busy place like the department would be far easier to infiltrate than the home of a man who thought a party was two people fishing side-by-side on a dock while nobody talked.

No. No no no. _"If I don't have your back, what's the point?"_ she'd said, and then Carlton had answered—had answered—

_"They can probably overhear us."_

She was at the crest of the hill, and that remembrance of those eerily prophetic words stopped her dead in her tracks. "Son of a bitch!" she said. "Oh, you son of a bitch." One of the witnesses they'd picked up after the bombing was the Advocate, was the person who kidnapped Annie Hua and ordered the gas station deaths and locked those poor kids in the basement until they starved to death. Was the person who knew something about Carlton—and something about Juliet, too. Well, he might have known Juliet, but he didn't know her all the way through, and he didn't know _this_.

She turned around, started a downward arc back home, let her feet built up speed until she was flying; and still she didn't race as quickly as her thoughts. They'd picked up four witnesses—a hairdresser, a car salesman, and two college students. The college students were too young, no older than Annie Hua herself, and there was no way they could've started building a criminal enterprise over a decade ago. Unless—unless they were feeding information to the Advocate, relaying conversations. Her gut said their suspect had been there in the station with them, but she knew they couldn't afford to rule out anything yet. 

She was heaving by the time she reached her apartment, and not for the first time she sent up a prayer of thanks that her unit was on the ground floor; bad enough that she had to fumble with her keys. Her phone was charging in the kitchen. She unplugged it and, without pause for consideration, called her partner first.

His voice was rough when he answered. _"O'Hara?"_

"Carlton, hi, sorry to wake you up—" She winced even though he couldn't see her. "I just had a thought about those witnesses we picked up after the bombing."

There was a rustling noise, and then he yawned right in her ear; when he'd finished cracking his jaw he said, _"Let's hear it."_

"You know that phone call we got? And the Advocate said something like, 'I hope you have someone to watch your back.' I said that to you. I said exactly that to you, the night we were interviewing people. I think—I'm pretty sure that one of them is the person we're looking for. Or maybe they're one of his subordinates, but my instincts say—"

 _"That he'd want to watch. No—gloat,"_ said Carlton. _"Christ, can you believe how brazen he is? He wanted to see the aftermath."_

"We picked up four, one of them has to be our suspect. Tomorrow morning, we bring them all down to the station and grill them. It's probably the—oh, what was his name? The salesman—"

 _"He was too slick for his own good,"_ said Carlton, _"but we need to look at all of them. We'll be able to rule out the college kids pretty quick. You don't think it's the hairdresser?"_

"Maybe," said Juliet. "Maybe. I don't know. It could just be a coincidence, right? 'Have your back,' people say that all the time. It's probably just a coincidence."

_"O'Hara. It's not a coincidence. He—or she, I guess—whoever the hell it was, they knew to say that. It was deliberate, and it was arrogant, and they probably didn't think we'd notice, but you did. Right?"_

"Right," said Juliet, and then, more confidently, "Right. I'll let you get back to sleep—sorry again about waking you up, I just couldn't wait to run it by you."

 _"Don't worry about it,"_ he said. His voice was still low, a little raw, and laden with sleep. She knew she should let him go, but she let the silence drag on, content to listen to him breathe. It was comforting to know he was still there, alive and unharmed.

"O'Hara—"

"See you tomorrow," Juliet said, and hung up.

She showered again on autopilot, and crawled into bed again; and this time she slept deeply, until she woke the next morning at the sound of her alarm.

-

Carlton delegated the task of talking to the two kids they'd picked up; neither of the young men had been older than nineteen, and while Juliet knew better than most that their age didn't excuse them from responsibility, she was still betting on their salesman. Rick Rogers, thirty-eight, already the owner of a GM dealership and the co-owner of a local tire company. He was metaphorically 'rolling in it,' and avarice, in her experience, only led to more avarice. That, and who better than a car dealer to run a chop shop? 

They found him in a big, pretentious office sitting behind a big, pretentious desk. He remembered them; as soon as Carlton rapped perfunctorily on the doorframe and strolled inside, he put down his phone and stood up. "Detectives," he said, and offered his hand. Juliet hung back, let Carlton do the buddy-buddy thing he occasionally pulled out of his bag of tricks while she studied Rogers.

He had an ornate tattoo of interlaced crosses on the backs of both hands—unusual but not completely unheard-of for a businessman. The work was beautiful, done in black and gray. She was half-tempted to ask the name of the artist, although she'd never really put thought into getting a tattoo herself.

Rogers was otherwise dressed well—"slick," Carlton would've said—in a crisp white shirt and charcoal slacks, polished shoes, and a lime-green tie that added a modern edge. His office was spacious and a little bland, like he'd asked someone else to decorate it for him. There were some model cars in a display case next to an old-fashioned drinks bar, and a map on the wall showing Santa Barbara beside a couple of pictures of the dealership and a cross.

Juliet hadn't been raised by nuns the way her partner had; her family was mostly Presbyterian, but not particularly devoted. They went to church at Christmas and Easter and reserved the other Sundays throughout the year for football. She still knew enough to tell the difference between a cross and a crucifix, though, and while she had the vague idea that Catholics displayed both, there was something a little...well, a little _slick_ about this cross. It was the inset rhinestones, probably.

She put on her best Police Gal Barbie face and said, "Rick? Oh gosh, I'm sorry to interrupt..."

"No, hon, don't worry about it," said Rick Rogers, Salesman Ken. Out of the edge of her vision, she caught Carlton rolling his eyes to the heavens. "Something you wanted to know?"

"This is just _such_ a lovely piece," she said, turning back to the cross, "I was wondering where it came from?"

"You have a good eye, Detective—Juliet? May I call you Juliet?" Rogers circled around his desk with all the stalk of a predator and none of the danger. He was small potatoes, and it was almost comical how unaware he was of it, but she still hated pulling out this routine—and she knew Carlton hated it, too, when she played vapid and helpless, but it was a tactic she was willing to use in small doses if it got her information that could save a life.

"Please do," she said, with a college try at a demure smile. "You have excellent taste."

"Why, thank you," he said. He was standing too close now, trying to use his height to make her feel small. She smiled again, a little more strongly, content with the knowledge that there was nothing a man like this could do to make her feel little. "It's from my church, in fact—Reverend Meyer's United Church of the Faithful. You've heard of it on TV, I bet." He winked. Behind him, Carlton gagged.

"Ooh, Reverend Meyer, I have heard of him! Now that is a place to worship—I can't imagine how much money went into funding that!"

"All for a good cause," said Rogers.

"I love a good cause," said Juliet. "UCF, though, what denomination is that?"

Rogers shrugged, clearly losing interest in the conversation once she stopped making coquette eyes. "Non-denominational. My folks are pretty involved."

"Evangelist?" she asked.

"I guess so. Listen, would you be interested—" He'd moved closer to her, hemming her in against the curios cabinet.

"Excuse me," said Juliet, and took great care to dig the heel of her pump into his foot as she ducked around him. Rogers yelped.

"Thank you for your time, Mr. Rogers," she said, "we'll be in touch if we have any further questions." She pivoted and made her exit; Carlton trailed behind her, torn between amusement and grouchiness.

"We're done?"

"For now," she said. 

They both got into the car, and then he said, "Just because he's a Protestant?"

"Just because he's a Protestant," Juliet confirmed.

"So now what?" he said. "We track down the hairdresser?"

"Unless you think it's one of the college kids," Juliet said. She had their statements spread over her lap and was looking at the text without really understanding any of it. "She's probably at work right now—we could drop in on her there, unless you think a public confrontation's a bad idea?"

"I'm starting to think one of the kids was playing informant. That's more likely than any one of these idiots actually being the mastermind, especially given their records. Rogers is the only one with any kind of black mark, and he's too clean for an operation like this."

"It's just as likely that Soledad's the informant—"

"What's the address?"

She told him. It was only a couple of blocks from the warehouse that was now a hazard area, entirely taped off along the gaping, blackened hole along one side. They drove past it on the way, and only wreckage was visible down the alley.

Style Theater was a modern shop in a recently gentrified area, a pocket of loft apartments and coffee shops surrounded on all sides by low-income residences and cheap corner markets. They parked on the street a few doors down and walked past a bakery and a gift boutique; the burned warehouse wasn't visible from the sidewalk, but Juliet could see how it would be easier to cut behind the shop and past the warehouse than winding through the streets to get to the block where Merche Soledad lived.

Carlton held the door for her, and as she folded her sunglasses into a pocket, she took the first few seconds to look around not with the eyes of an investigator but with those of an official client. The walls were lime green, the stations black, and the radio was set to soft rock. The only client was a woman having her roots touched up, but it was still early—during a weekday, they probably wouldn't have too many appointments. The overall impression was of a quirky, experimental edge. It made her want to book a cut, maybe get a couple of highlights herself. Her hair went dull so quickly—

"Can I help you?"

Juliet coughed. "Ack, sorry. Juliet O'Hara, Santa Barbara Police Department. We have a few questions for one of your stylists?"

The receptionist looked like she wanted to crawl under the desk. "I, of course, yeah, who?"

"Soledad Merche," said Carlton. "We spoke with her recently about the warehouse explosion."

"We don't have anyone named that who works here," the receptionist said. "Is that all?"

"Check again. Soledad Merche," said Juliet. "She was, oh, late thirties, a little taller than me, short hair. I think she was Latina, or maybe biracial."

Behind her, Carlton's phone started to buzz. He looked at the display, held out a finger, and stepped outside to take the call. His body language was belligerent, maybe unwelcoming, but not unreceptive; bad news from a good caller, probably.

"No," said the receptionist, "nobody of that name or description works here." She was cool, just the tolerable side of snotty, even, and she turned away from the desk without giving Juliet further consideration.

"Wait!" said Juliet. "You can confirm that? How long have you worked here?"

The receptionist rolled her eyes. "Six years, and yes, I can confirm that."

"Could I take a look at your employee roster, please?" Juliet pressed. The detective of two years ago would've apologized, at this point, or made nice. She was more weathered now, though, and she stayed steady—firm, but polite.

The receptionist huffed and started yanking open drawers. For all her bad manners, she looked like a catalogue model. Juliet felt a pang of envy when she caught sight of the receptionist's nails, which were long, neat, and polished a pearly purple. She'd yet to find a nail polish strong enough to hold up to the demands of police work.

"Here," the woman said, and shoved a handwritten list of names across the desk. "It's current. Anything else?"

Juliet took her time reading through the names, but there was no entry for anyone named Soledad. They could come back with a warrant, if they suspected a cover-up, but she was starting to think they'd been played. 

"That's all," she said. "Thank you for your time."

"Yeah, no problem." Purple Nails went back to her game of Words with Friends, and Juliet, with one last glance at the portraits on the wall, went outside.

Carlton was hanging up as she joined him outside the salon. "Anything?" he asked.

"Never heard of her," Juliet said. "I feel like they're telling the truth, too, but we can come back with a warrant if you think it's necessary. I don't."

"We'll keep it as an option. That was Kekoa, by the way—she thinks she's found Alvarez."

"Alvarez— _Mark_ Alvarez? The Immaculata guy Julio knew?"

"That's him," said Carlton. "Let's get back to the station. I want to fax her the picture of that ring, see if he can ID it. At very least he might be able to confirm that the Advocate's a woman, which gives us a better lock on Soledad."

"We don't even know that name was real," Juliet said. "Or that she's our suspect."

"Is there any other reason she'd give up a bogus job? Don't answer that—we don't need a complete list of scenarios, O'Hara. We'll swing by her residence after we talk to Kekoa and check in with Vick."

"Send a patrol officer. We'll start running her name through databases."

"Even better," said Carlton, and took off towards the car. She clipped along behind him, almost keeping pace despite her shorter stride and hobbling footwear. There were days when the pros of wearing heels did not outweigh the cons.

She radioed the request for a beat officer to stop by the home address Soledad had given and spent the rest of the tense drive back to the SBPD scrolling through the phone the Advocate had sent them in the box that had appeared on Carlton's desk. She'd taken to carrying it with her, and had even tracked down an old charger to keep the battery from running low; she knew the odds that they'd be contacted twice in the same way were slim, but then she remembered the children they'd found, locked in the basement of that house, and the scratches and chips around the doorknob where they'd tried to free themselves. Why had they been abandoned there? Had they simply been discarded once they'd earned enough to win Soledad's grace?

It dawned on her, slow, obvious, and too late, that her exhaustion, her trouble concentrating and sleeping, weren't only because she was trying to navigate the still waters of her partnership, because she was trying to pour herself into a new relationship that was, at best, a diversion. She rarely let the job get to her to this degree—police learned early to distance themselves from trauma, or they didn't last long on the force. And there was Carlton, restless beside her, haggard enough that for one rare moment she wondered how long they could keep this up, and she doubted.

The cell was an older model, although it looked new—cheap and black, one of the flip phones that was starting to go out of fashion. The techs had torn it apart looking for evidence, but they'd had no luck dusting for prints, combing the memory, tracing the call, or running the serial number. There were no contacts saved in the address book, no outgoing calls and only one incoming, the call made to the station and to Juliet and Carlton themselves. The blocky background was a generic animation of clouds.

When the pulled into the station parking lot, she closed the phone and put it back in her pocket, but not before Carlton gave her a knowing look. "What?" she said.

"Nothing, O'Hara. Let's see what Kekoa dug up."

They spent a couple of minutes tearing through the thick case file, deciding what would be most relevant and what was a useless line of inquiry for their new contact, and then, when Carlton took the blow-up of the ring and started for the decrepit fax machine behind the front desk, she scooped his phone off his desk and said, "Seriously? Just email her the picture."

He squinted suspiciously at her. Carlton wasn't exactly a Luddite, but she doubted he used his fancy department-issue phone for anything other than calls and the occasional text. "I told her I'd fax her," he said.

"Never mind, I'll do it," she said. "What's her—oh here, you saved her address." She snapped a picture of the picture—hopefully the resolution wouldn't be so terrible that the inscription would be lost—and emailed it to Leilani Kekoa, along with their description of Merche Soledad. Kekoa called back almost immediately, and Juliet dangled the phone in front of her partner.

His scowl lacked any energy or vehemence whatsoever as he took it from her. "Lassiter," he said. "Kekoa, how—" A pause, and then, "He's sure?"

Juliet—there was no other word for it— _hovered_.

"Good," said Carlton. "Yeah. Yep. Don't let him...no. No, I know that. And Kekoa—thanks." He hung up, dropped his phone on his desk, and said, "It's her."

"It's her?" said Juliet.

"Merche Soledad. That, by the way, is her real name, or close enough. Alvarez says that not only will he testify that she's the leader of Immaculata, but that this is her ring we found in that kid's stomach."

She was aware that they still had a long, uphill slog in front of them, but this—this was— "Can he name any accomplices?"

"Kekoa's working on it," said Carlton, "but he's been out of the game almost a decade. Christ, Soledad must have been..."

"Younger than me when she started this outfit," Juliet said. He was staring past her, grim-faced, doing some calculation in his head; she hoped he wasn't dwelling on either the twelve, almost thirteen, years between them, or on his own failure to identify Soledad as a threat earlier. "We need a warrant, we need to catch the Chief up, we need to figure out how we're going to track her down—"

"And what angle we're going to work in interrogation," he said. He leaned back against the desk and crossed his arms; Juliet, as she had a thousand times before, stepped into the angle between his legs and the furniture as she started furiously sorting through their paperwork. "O'Hara, there's a good chance she's out of our jurisdiction by now."

"No," said Juliet, "I don't think so. This is her territory. There's something holding her here—why else would she keep coming back? Profit's only one of her angles, or else she'd be down in L.A."

"We're dealing with an operation that's as much religious cult as organized gang—"

"She wouldn't be connected to a local church, would she?" She'd found the notes they'd gotten from a professor of theology at one of the area's Jesuit universities on the corrupted Catholic symbolism used by Immaculata. There was a whole packet on Mariology. "No, she'd see herself as the head of her own church. Do you think she's a believer, or is she only borrowing the doctrine to suit her own purposes—"

"O'Hara."

"Would she have a residence or a—some kind of headquarters in Santa Barbara? I wonder if—"

"O'Hara," Carlton said, and gently took the files from her hands. "Go talk to Vick. I'll get started on that warrant. After that, coffee and lunch."

Juliet checked the wall clock. "Dinner," she said. "And we'll run her name."

"Get to it," he said, and elbowed her in the direction of the Chief's office.

Vick was on the phone with her husband when Juliet knocked and stuck her head inside, but she wrapped up the call fast and waved Juliet inside to one of the chairs. "What have you got for me, Detective?" she said.

Juliet told her about Soledad, located through a combination of good (or bad) luck, Carlton's contact's contact, and hubris. "I don't have any doubt," she added at the end. "Kekoa believes Alvarez, and we've had a third party, Julio Zavala, confirm that Alvarez knows what he's talking about. He met her, back when she first took control of the organization. He's willing to testify."

"Good," said Vick. "I don't have to tell you that that's excellent news. This has dragged on far longer than I would have liked—not through any fault of yours, but it's been a messy ride. We still have a long way to go, though. You think Soledad is holding Annie Hua herself?"

"My gut says she won't be far." Juliet uncrossed her legs and, through the slats of the blinds on Vick's window, found Carlton at his desk. "The way she talks, the arrogance of calling Carlton directly—she's proud, and she likes to be in control."

"She strikes me as a fanatic," Vick said with typical bluntness. "That makes her even more dangerous, and if she's still calculating enough to take that fanaticism and use it to her own advantage...confidentially, I'll be surprised if Annie is still alive by this time tomorrow, if our Advocate hasn't killed her already."

"I know," said Juliet. "I don't want to think it, but..."

"You and Detective Lassiter have a plan to integrate this new information into the search effort?"

"He's working on getting a warrant now. We'll do what we can—"

"You're both going home to get some sleep tonight. No, O'Hara, that's an order. You've both pulled too many all-nighters lately, hand off coordination to Lehane or French, I don't care who."

"Chief—"

"I don't care if you work late," Vick said. "I doubt I'll be out of here before midnight, but the last thing we need is you or Carlton out canvassing the streets when you're both running on fumes. Barring some drastic break, you will go home, you will shower, and you will sleep, is that clear?"

Juliet yielded. "Yes, Chief."

"Excellent. You've done some solid work here, don't drop the ball on follow-up." Vick softened the instruction with a tight grimace that was too quick to be called a smile, but her face was friendly, if tired.

"Thanks, Chief," Juliet said, and clicked her way back to Carlton's side. She pulled her chair over to his desk; he was still on the phone, talking to someone in the D.A.'s office, but he had a list of tips that had been called in over the past couple of weeks in front of him and was going over it as he argued his way through the legal side of the case by rote. She slid the next couple of pages out from under his arm and started to read through them. Now that they had an ID on their perpetrator, it was possible that buried among the crackpot theories and paranoid busybodies was a real lead that would only make sense in light of the new development.

There was a buzz from her pocket; for a brief, topsy-turvy moment, she thought it was the Advocate's flip phone, but then she realized it was her own cell. Shawn was calling.

She should pick up. She really should pick up—he was probably worried about her, since she'd been so out-of-touch the past few days. That, or he wanted an update about the case. 

She hit the "Ignore" button and went back to her tip sheets.

-

They worked late, pouring over maps and databases and files; they each fetched their own coffee, although Juliet put off returning Shawn's call until it was too late to reasonably do so. Half of the SBPD had been called in as support at one point or another, and now more than ever they had to not only run their own operations but coordinate the efforts of a dozen others.

At half-past midnight, though, Juliet looked up from a voter registry to see Carlton, head propped on one hand, starting to nod off over his empty coffee cup. His eyes were heavy-lidded, and he was about six seconds away from falling face-first into his desk. He was normally the definition of stamina—actually, his zeal for work sometimes left even Juliet, a workaholic who had made detective when most of her peers were just starting to apply for their first jobs out of college, exhausted.

"Carlton?" she said. "Carlton. Come on, wake up. We're going home."

He jolted a little, startled, when she nudged him. "I—" he said, and then checked his watch. "Crap. All right, O'Hara."

"I'll drive you," Juliet said. "No, don't argue, you're exhausted. Can you even see straight?" He rolled his eyes at her and then ruined his snit by yawning. Juliet rolled her eyes right back, locked up their files, and told Shelley, who'd been put in charge of the search efforts, that they were heading home. Carlton caught up to her as she was pulling on her suit jacket; he hadn't bothered with his, although his collar was a little wet—he'd splashed his face with water and downed more coffee, judging by the styrofoam cup in his hand.

"Ready?" she said.

He hooked the empty cup into a trash can as he followed her to her Bug and said, "Under duress, O'Hara, I might admit that I am ready to see my bed."

She was tired enough herself that she had to bite back her first, second, and third responses to that, and commented only, "Me, too. Feel free to move the seat back if you need to—oh, shoot. I forgot I need gas."

Carlton, who hadn't even folded himself into the passenger seat, said, "Take the Vic. Or my car."

"This is so lazy." He yawned at her, though, and she said, "Vic it is."

Surprisingly, he still didn't argue about letting her drive, only passed over the keys and then tugged irritably at his tie. It felt a little odd to have him riding shotgun in this car; he wasn't a complete stickler about who drove—he did ride in her Beetle every now and then, and she could coax him into letting her drive if she cared enough to expend the effort, but the passenger side of the car was firmly her territory. Since she'd given up carrying a handbag in the field, the glove compartment was full of lip gloss, tampons, her preferred ammo, and energy bars, and all the air vents pointed at the ground, because she hated having them blow on her face or arms. Nevertheless, Carlton in her seat was a minor development compared to the outright invasion of anyone else trying to ride in the front of the Vic.

"Planning on moving anytime soon?"

She realized she'd been idling at a light that had already turned green. "Oops."

"Yeah, 'oops,'" he said. "I would say something about you falling asleep at the wheel, O'Hara, but we both know that—son of a _bitch!"_

Juliet slammed the brakes and swerved to the shoulder before they were all the way through the intersection. Her heart was pounding; she could feel it thrumming below her ribs, like a hummingbird trapped in a cage, frantic to escape. "What the hell was—O'Hara? O'Hara, are you okay?"

Mechanically, she squirmed a hand into the pocket of her slacks, pulled out the little black flip phone, and held it up so Carlton could read the screen. She didn't need to turn on the interior lights; the backlight had activated, clearly illuminating the words there: _1 NEW MESSAGE._

They stared at each other while Juliet's heart throbbed in her ears, and then she opened the message and read it.

_"Second time's the charm. Bang bang, Detectives."_

"She's taunting us," Carlton snarled. "What the hell does that mean? Second time. Second time of what?"

She almost had it; it was on the tip of her tongue, but she couldn't wrap her teeth around the right words—

"The warehouse," she said. "Second time—that's the warehouse."

"Or the safehouse," Carlton argued. 

"Why would she stash Annie there, though? We've been back to the safehouse—"

"That assumes she's trying to lure us to the place she's keeping Hua."

"Bait," Juliet said. "Annie is bait, of course she's there."

"Or Soledad only wants us to think she has Hua. This is a trap, O'Hara."

"I know it's a trap. I know." She sat there for a moment, her fist tight around the cheap plastic phone, and then she said, "But we have to go anyway."

"I'll call for backup," he said, already reaching for the radio. "We're going to be hard-pressed to get the kind of firepower we need, but hell, it's not like we have a lot of time anyway."

"'Bang bang,'" Juliet said.

"'Bang bang,'" Carlton agreed, and then— "What are you waiting for? Floor it, O'Hara!"

She peeled away from the shoulder so fast she burned rubber. Her heart was hammering still, but there was a strange, detached _elation_ racing through her, lighting up her senses and tinging the air she breathed with something sweet and ominous. Her partner was beside her on the radio, rattling out codes and instructions, and the parts of her that felt weary, anxious, or fearful—she shut those parts off, numbed them with adrenaline.

"Siren off!" he barked when they turned down Hollin Street, and she flipped off the siren and the headlights and slowed to a crawl. The warehouse was in front of them, a lopsided silhouette with one jagged corner missing; thirty yards out, behind the cover of a dumpster, she stopped, threw the car into park, and turned off the engine.

"Do we wait for backup?" she said.

"We don't have backup," he said. "At least not yet. There's a wreck at State and Mission, and every patrol car in a twenty-mile radius is trying to sort out the pile-up. We can wait and risk losing our chance, or—"

"Or we decide we're our own backup," she said. He looked back at her, and even as she said it she knew it was no choice at all, not for them. "Vests in the trunk," she said. "Do you know the floorplan?"

"There's every chance we're wrong—"

"Carlton," she said. "Do you know the floorplan?"

He popped his seatbelt and pulled his Glock, checked the ammunition, slid the magazine home and chambered a round. "There's a lot of debris in there they haven't cleaned up," he said. "Old shipping containers and crates, glass on the ground...it's a maze."

"All right." She stared through the windshield, looking for signs of life in the pools of light cast by the intermittent floodlights. "Do we split up and flank the building, or stick together? My gut says we stay together, but—"

"Then we go with your gut," he said. "Ready?"

"Ready," Juliet said. "And Carlton—"

"Yeah?"

She shook her head. "Nothing. Let's go."

They moved fast and low around the car, levered the trunk open, and pulled out the two bullet-resistant vests there—type IIA, lightweight, ample protection against anything short of a rifle round. She finished fastening hers, tugged at the front to shift it into place, and turned to help Carlton, who had stripped off his tie and was looking at her with a face so starkly naked she could read it even in the dark alley. He was a man looking at the thing he most desired but refused to let himself have, a man dying of thirst on the bank of a stream. She understood that feeling not vicariously, with the broad sympathy of human experience, but viscerally, in her gut; she had felt that yearning, still felt it in the pit of her stomach and in her bones.

But this was not a unique moment. They had gone into battle together before, and would again, and neither of them would allow the impending threat to feed into a moment of weakness. Instead of leaning into him, like her instincts demanded, she held out her fist. He bumped his knuckles against hers, and then they drew their guns and went down the alley.

He led, playing vanguard, sticking to the shadows on the side unlined by floodlights; Juliet swept behind him, watching his back, half her attention on their six in case they'd already been spotted. They had a good eighty feet until they reached the warehouse door, and the only windows were high above their heads—if they were being watched, it was because they were expected, and it was by someone who'd had plenty of time to pick out their vantage point.

Her heart had stopped humming in her ears; her pulse was steady, expectant. Without a conscious decision, she'd started matching her breathing to Carlton's, or he'd started matching his to hers. Against the familiar grip of her Glock, her palms were dry. Her hands did not shake.

Carlton hauled up short ten yards from the warehouse door, and Juliet settled into a crouch beside him, her gaze locked back on the way they'd come; she knew without asking that he be looking the way they were going. She felt more than heard him say, "Hear anything?"

"No," she whispered. "No lights, either. Unless they're on the opposite side."

"Great."

"Dark warehouse, nothing scary about that." It was easy to be chipper.

"Hope you brought your ball of twine." He'd turned to look at her; his breath stirred her hair. "Right or left?"

"Left," she said. He nodded, rose out of his crouch, and slid along the wall until they were just beside the door. It was standing open; with only a brief pause to listen again, he walked inside, and Juliet followed.

'Labyrinthine' was the right description. The shipping containers were stacked far above her head, far above _Carlton's_ head, and the only light came from a far corner high enough overhead that their narrow avenue was still mostly in darkness. About five free from the door the containers cut off the direct route; they'd have to go either left or right.

Carlton froze again, head tilted, and this time Juliet heard it, too. From the direction of that far-off light came a high, thin sob, and then another; someone was crying.

She pointed to the far side, and then to the left; Carlton nodded again, and then slipped away to the right. Everything in her screamed out against splitting up, but they'd have a better chance if she could circle around the long way and come at an angle to whatever waited for them under the light. Separated, they made two targets instead of one.

The long lanes of black made her progress painfully limited; she took a gamble and kicked off her shoes, since the less-than-stable footwear had slowed her to a crawl across the uneven ground. More than once she came to a dead end that forced her to go back and take a different turn, and out of long habit she counted her steps and kept track of her turns under her breath, even while she cleared each corner with all the fast precision that her years on the force had drilled into her. Beneath the layers of attention that were concentrated on finding her way and on sensing assailants and on Carlton, she looked for a way up—a ladder, stairs, crates, even a break in the uniformly towering stacks of containers that might allow her to scramble to the top, letting her climb out of the blind and regain the high ground, but she was hard out of luck.

The sobbing continued at intervals; Juliet hoped that meant they hadn't been detected, that whoever was crying continued to cry because they hadn't realized the game was changing, but she knew that hostages cried for a lot of reasons—and that assumed that she was hearing a hostage. She blocked out the sound and followed that slant of light, and after a long, long time, she noticed the passages starting to brighten; she could make out the colors of the shipping containers now, and the ceiling, far overhead though it was. She took a right, a left, ducked around another right and pulled back _hard_ , because there ahead of her was a clearing.

In that half a heartbeat, she'd seen that the containers abruptly gave way to open ground, all the way back to the warehouse walls, and that at woman was sitting on the ground in the middle of the clearing. Her long fall of dark hair had obscured her face, but her shoulders were heaving and she was wailing that thin, eerie wail. Juliet risked another look, enough to be sure—but yes, the woman was Annie Hua.

With her head down Annie was still unaware of Juliet; her hands looked like they were bound behind her back, but she wasn't looking at anyone else, either. That might mean she was alone, or it might mean she was in shock to the degree that she was unresponsive. Juliet didn't have much of a choice—if Annie was alone, she might not be for much longer. It was lunacy to rush out into a position that revealing, but it was also Juliet's job to make sure Annie escaped without further harm, and the job came first. She took the corner fast, leading with her Glock, head down and eyes clear—and wasn't surprised when Carlton emerged from her right at the same time.

She hissed to catch his attention; he looked at her, jerked his head behind him, and then said, softly, "Annie?"

Juliet was still three or four yards away, but she could see that Annie was shaking. She was murmuring something over and over under her breath; the wailing had stopped, but she still wasn't looking at either Juliet or Carlton. "Annie," Carlton said again. "I need you too look at me." And then, when Annie didn't respond, he said again, sharper: _"Annie."_

Juliet was never sure of the exact sequence of what followed, when she later tried to recall it; the memories would take on the oversaturated quality of a movie reel, but she did remember how time slowed down, how the world started to blur as though it were floating past her and away from her on the surface of some great river, leaving her standing on the bank. She remembered that, and she remembered how, as Carlton approached, Annie's hands came up—one empty, one filled with steel that glinted silver; and she remembered choking out a warning that grated at her throat as Annie's knife caught Carlton between the ribs.

For one impossible movement, they froze in that tableau—Juliet just emerging from the blind of the maze, Carlton curled forward with a hand still clenched around his Glock, Annie with her closed fist pressed against his bullet-resistant but not _stab_ -resistant vest—and there was no sound other than the punch of breath that burst out of Carlton, it seemed like there would never be any sound again. Juliet's hair was loosening from its knot at the nape of her neck. She felt that clearly, the weight and texture of it, and it threw her back to that evening weeks before when Carlton had unsnarled the tangles left by her hair clip.

And then Annie pulled back, the knife slick and smeared; when she dropped it, the clatter echoed. "Oh my God," she said, "oh my God, oh my God oh my God oh my God—"

Something in Juliet slotted into place at the sound of that knife hitting the concrete. She barked out, "Freeze!" as her partner crumpled to the ground. 

"Oh my god," Annie said. "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, oh my God, she said I had to, she said she said she said—"

"Who said?" Juliet had Hua in her sights, was staring her down steady with both eyes open; Carlton was at her feet. _"Who said?"_

"She did," said Annie. She was staring at her hands. "She said I had to, she said—oh my God. Oh my God, oh my Godddd—" 

Her voice cut into another of those thin wails, and Juliet, who no longer had time or mercy enough to spare, whose partner was at her feet, whose partner was _bleeding out at her feet,_ said, "Get down on the ground or I will put you on the ground." For two, three, four breaths Hua didn't move except to shake hard enough that her teeth rattled, but then, slowly at first, she got down on one knee, and then the other. "Face-down, hands behind your head!" Juliet snapped. Hua laced her fingers behind her neck, and only then did Juliet move closer. 

"I'm going to cuff one of your wrists and back away," she said. She didn't recognize her own voice; _was_ that her voice? "When I tell you, you will move to your immediate right, thread the cuff through the handle on the crate, and cuff yourself there. If you don't comply, I will shoot. Clear?"

A muffled sound, more chattering teeth—well, who the fuck cared if that wasn't clear, Juliet would be happy to put a bullet in this bitch who'd repaid her partner for his pains with a knife. She pulled her cuffs out and snapped them one-handed around Hua's wrist, glanced at her six, backed away. "Now!" she said.

Hua was crying when she raised her face. She was crying, but there on her left hand—the one Juliet had cuffed—was a smear of red. She stumbled to the freight container and, rather than threading the cuff through as Juliet had instructed, closed it around one of the waist-high handles. Good enough. 

(And in the back of her mind: "She said." Who was _she?_ )

Juliet dropped to the ground so hard her knees cracked against the concrete. Carlton was conscious, but barely so; he'd hit his head on the way down or else Hua had hit something vital. He had his hand pressed against his side, but he was bleeding heavily enough to—did he know he couldn't use bleach on bloodstains? No, that was silly, he took his work shirts to a dry cleaner, she'd picked them up for him once—

His mouth shaped a word: "O'Hara."

"Shut up," she said, and pressed her hand over his. "Don't try—Carlton—"

"O'Hara," he said again. She thought at first he was delirious or concussed, that he was fading out of consciousness, that he was fading out of life, but then he said something else. _"Behind you."_

She whipped to her feet so fast that at first she wasn't aware she'd picked up Carlton's sidearm rather than her own; back the way Carlton had come, her figure far enough into shadows that she was more silhouette than woman, was their architect.

"Merche Soledad," Juliet bit out.

"Detective O'Hara," Soledad said. She was armed. "How lovely. You got here much faster than I expected. Will your partner be needing last rites? Viaticum?"

Juliet had felt anger before. Like a lot of cops, she had a temper, although she had a better handle on hers than most; she'd felt anger, and disgust. She had thought, until that moment, that she'd felt hatred before, too, but she'd been wrong. Whatever dislike she'd felt was a poor, pale imitation of the real thing, the quick flaring fury and the slower molten revulsion that this woman inspired in her. She wanted to kill Soledad; right then, she couldn't think of any good reason not to shoot Soledad, couldn't think of reason at all.

"I'm going to kill you," Juliet said.

"Such authority, Detective," Soledad said. "But I'm afraid I have to refuse—!" She bit off her sentence and flung herself backwards, rolled low, and vanished into the labyrinth. Instinct drove Juliet to pursue—hunter's instinct, the dumbest, most wildly stupid impulse she'd ever acted on—but Carlton was behind her, his blood on the concrete, so she went after Soledad. Of course she did.

She didn't have even the broadly sketched internal map she'd built of the warehouse's northern side to guide her, but Soledad was moving too fast to be silent. Her footfalls were loud on the hard ground, loud enough that Juliet could track her blindfolded with enough patience; and she kept talking.

"How do you think Detective Lassiter is faring, Detective O'Hara? Do you wonder about the state of his soul?" Juliet paused, listened, moved; paused, listened, backtracked and took a different turn; paused, listened, and moved again. The concrete was tearing her stockings to shreds, but without shoes she walked with an absolute silence. "I would worry, if I were you—stab wounds can be messy, if not as traumatic as gunshot wounds. Have you ever been shot? Has your partner?"

She recognized the cadence of Soledad's voice now, although without the modulator she'd used over the phone she had a rich timbre—a throaty alto. People would follow that voice; Juliet, following for far different reasons, understood now the influence that voice could wield. It was persuasive. It saw you, and it used what it saw.

Another flurry of footsteps, and then Soledad, from somewhere ahead, said, "When I asked him how he earned his grace, he said that he did his duty. That's a fine, rare answer, isn't it? I believe he was telling the truth; he doesn't strike me as a man with much of a talent for lies. And what about you, Detective O'Hara?" The voice was moving closer now; Soledad had doubled back, probably down a path that paralleled Juliet's.

"How do you earn your grace?" Soledad continued. Distantly, Juliet was aware that Soledad was trying to make her angry enough to slip up, was aware that Soledad should have had backup but appeared to be alone except for Hua. She was aware of these things in the same way she was aware that it was spring, that her feet hurt, and that her car still needed gas; they were peripheral concerns. Her entire being was straining out for Soledad, her entire attention focussed on the sounds of that voice and those steps.

"I'm a shepherd," said Soledad, "or, if you prefer, a mother—I find it most profitable to guide the seeker to his or her answer, rather than to provide an answer of my own. So tell me, Detective—what's your creed? You strike me as a woman who serves mercy over justice. That's a flaw, isn't it, a fatal blemish running through your bedrock..."

Juliet paused, listened, breathed; moved forward on quiet feet, sucking in air through her mouth so even the whisper of respiration wouldn't give her away. Soledad's voice was clearer, now, and closer.

"I take even the weak into my flock; I make them strong. You saw Annie, didn't you? She's still trembling. I made threats that would appall even you, I told her that my justice would roll down like the waters if she refused to obey, but she did obey in the end. She earned her grace through service."

Juliet's hands tightened around the grip of Carlton's Glock; she made one last correction to her course and stopped breathing at all.

"Service and duty are all well and good, but you're more imaginative, Detective. You watch your partner's back, you take justice with one hand and give mercy liberally with the other, but I do wonder if these are the virtues that truly guide you...I'll ask you once more, Detective O'Hara: How do you earn your grace?" 

Her voice was very clear, very close, so that as Juliet stepped from the darkness and leveled her gun between Soledad's shoulder blades, she could hear the other woman inhale; she could even smell the distinct flood of hormones and sweat that meant _fear_.

"You want to know how I earn my grace?" Juliet said. "I keep my word. Now drop. Your. Gun."

She credited Soledad with this: despite her fear, the other woman didn't panic. She tensed and then relaxed, and Juliet, already worn, relaxed with her; that was when Soledad struck. She spun fast, throwing a hard backhand. Juliet ducked, struck at Soledad's chest, and then, knowing she had to end it, dropped to her knees, brought her muzzle to Soledad's gut, and fired.

She stayed there only long enough to make sure that Soledad was staying down; she didn't know how she found her way back to Carlton, but the next thing she was aware of was being at his side, holding—oh, she'd brought his gun with her, good, he'd want his gun—

Her hands were pressed over his, trying to stop the bleeding; he wasn't conscious. She wanted to shake him, slap him, make him wake up and look at her and say—say—

(There were sirens.)

Someone was sobbing. If he were awake, Carlton would make a crack about that, how stabbing scenes were no place for tears. No, he'd be funnier than that, she'd never told him how much he made her laugh, how often she had to fight to keep a straight face at a crime scene because he'd made some inappropriate remark. 

She couldn't tell if his chest was rising or falling anymore. Shootings, those she knew about—most people aimed for the center mass with a shooting, she'd seen a seven-foot drug dealer go down with a sucking chest wound once. That was messy, but she'd managed to keep him alive until the EMTs arrived. Now it was Carlton on the ground, and he had only this one small slit between his ribs, and he was dying and she couldn't even remember if she was supposed to use CPR.

(Shouting?)

His face had gone pale and clammy, and his eyes were no longer moving under their lids. Someone was sobbing, _she_ was sobbing at him, and her fingers were tight around the back of his hand. She hadn't touched him so much in months.

"O'Hara."

She had to remember to take care of his Glock. It was there on the concrete beside them; the muzzle had something on it, dirt or—he wouldn't like that, he'd want to clean it. And her hair. She'd have to do something about her hair.

"Jules? Oh God, Jules—"

There were hands that were trying to pull her away, drag her back, but she struggled and wrenched her arm free and managed to fight her way back to her partner. "Jules, let go of him, you have to let the medics through—"

"Come on, Juliet, it's all going to be okay, just let these people do their job—"

"Is he breathing? Never mind. Check Detective O'Hara, too, she might be hiding an injury—"

"Jules, listen to me. You have to let him go."

Someone was trying to drag her away again. They were more persistent this time, but Juliet locked her eyes on Carlton's face and peeled the arms away from her torso. They came back, wrapped around her, lifted her up; she tossed her head, twisted out of the grip, hit someone hard enough in the face to bruise her knuckles, and dropped back to her partner's side.

"Oh great Scott, that hurt—"

"She's in shock."

"Shawn? Shawn, are you okay?"

"We have to get to him, he's lost too much blood—"

"Let me try, Mr. Spencer."

There were more hands on her; she ignored them, tried to shake them off, but they returned to her shoulders. "Detective O'Hara. Detective? Juliet, for Lassiter's sake you NEED TO LET GO."

Vick?

"No," Juliet said. "No. You don't understand, he's been stabbed—"

"I hear you, O'Hara. These EMTs are going to take care of him, but you need to let them through. Can you put down the gun?"

Was she holding a gun? She looked at her hands, and found Carlton's Glock in the left one. She set it down next to his head, where he could find it, and then she let Vick pull her to her feet and guide her away. Not too far away; she kept her eyes locked on Carlton's face as the medical team swarmed over him with tubes and needles, gauze and masks and he was disappearing, he was disappearing under—

"I have to ride in the ambulance," she said.

"O'Hara—"

"I have to ride in the ambulance," she repeated.

"O'Hara. O'Hara, look at me." Vick was there? "I can't let you ride in his ambulance, but I'll drive you to the hospital myself. We can follow. Unless you're hurt—are you hurt?"

"No," she said, "but Carlton is." The were strapping him in, lifting him to a stretcher, and she tried to follow. Vick caught her around the shoulders. 

"Whoa there. We're going to my car, remember?" Juliet didn't; but she let Vick lead her out, through the maze of the freight containers, back to the door. Vick put her in the passenger side of the car and buckled her seatbelt; she could see Carlton through the windshield. They were loading him into an ambulance. Vick was there, though. Vick was a good chief, she wouldn't let anything happen to Carlton, not like Juliet had—

Juliet gagged.

"O'Hara? Are you all right?"

"I'm going to be sick," Juliet managed, and then she leaned out of the car, past her boss, and threw up all over the pavement.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Juliet reads from Tana French. Love to the usual suspects for all their help, enthusiasm, and long-sufferance!

They told him he'd been stabbed, in the left side of his torso between two ribs. Collapsed lung, blood loss, concussion from where he'd hit his head as he fell—a lot of medical jargon that meant nothing to him, since for the first couple of days he was both intubated and under heavy sedation.

He hurt. His whole chest hurt. That would be the collapsed lung; but they kept him on the good stuff, a morphine drip, although he was rarely conscious enough to search for the button O'Hara kept folding into his hand and that he kept dropping.

She was there every time he woke up, curled into an ugly armchair at the side of his bed, except for once, in the middle of the night. He sought her out as soon as his vision cleared, but her chair was empty, and a hot lance of panic shot through him until he heard her in the bathroom, flushing the toilet. She came back and burrowed under her nubby hospital-issue blanket and then they watched each other, there in the dark, until he fell asleep again.

When she was awake, she read to him. He recognized Raymond Chandler at first, but she finished that while he was out cold and started something new—a story he hadn't heard before, about an undercover detective in Dublin. Her voice was raw by the time they yanked out the tubes that had kept him breathing. They asked him a few questions, gave him some warnings, fell back into the medical jargon. He wanted them to leave, and, finally, they did. O'Hara stayed. She stayed the whole time, as he coughed and gagged around the tubing, as he fought against the sharp stick of pain that reminded him of a knife in his side all over again, and as he vomited and spit into a plastic tub.

He waited for her to say something. She looked at him, those big blue eyes of hers rimmed in red, and then she dropped her gaze to the book in her lap and said, "Chapter seven."

And that didn't make him feel like he'd failed. Not. At. All.

Someone along the way had bullied her into a fresh set of clothes—old sweatpants and what he thought was a t-shirt she'd borrowed from him at the gym a couple of months ago. Her hair was clean and combed, at least, loose around her shoulders, but she'd been biting her nails, and she looked like she was starting to lose weight. He wasn't sure who was taking care of her, but he was glad someone was. The first suspect was Karen Vick, who'd been his only visitor other than O'Hara. He'd only seen Vick twice, both times when he was half a deck shy of lucid, and that meant his very strict instructions that no one was to contact his family unless he'd been shot more than once, suffered brain damage, or died were being followed to the letter. 

He fell asleep again; when he woke up, she was starting chapter eleven. She looked up when he cleared his throat, aware that he'd be pretty hoarse himself for the next couple of days.

"Give me that, O'Hara," he said.

She made a wordless sound of protest, but he held out his hand and she set the book in it; she didn't let their fingers touch. He flipped back a few pages to get his bearing while she tucked her legs up under her and rearranged her blanket.

"Chapter eleven," he said, and then had to pause to clear his throat. His voice was at least as scratchy as O'Hara's, although his hoarseness wasn't self-inflicted. _"What people tend to forget about Sam is that he has one of the highest solve rates on the Murder squad. Sometimes I wonder if this is for a very simple reason: he doesn't waste energy."_

He read through the end of that chapter and the beginning of the next before his energy started to flag, and O'Hara, who'd watched him without appearing to blink once from the moment he first spoke, took the book from him without saying anything. Her chair was a little closer to the bed than it had been the night before. His first thought, even through the haze of medication, had been for O'Hara; he'd been agitated enough that one of the nurses finally brought him a pen and a notepad. He'd managed to scrawl out _O'Hara?_ and shove it at the blur that he'd thought was Vick. "She's fine, Carlton," a voice had said. "I wouldn't let her be sleeping in a chair if she'd been injured."

And there was the Chief herself, knocking at the door and letting herself in without waiting for an answer. "Well well, Detective Lassiter. Nice to see you looking more like yourself."

He coughed a couple of time and then managed to spit out, "Chief."

"O'Hara, if you wouldn't mind doing me a favor, I only have a few minutes before I need to be at City Hall and I would murder for a coffee." Vick's tone was expectant, and O'Hara closed her book and slipped out of the room.

As soon as the door shut behind her, Lassiter demanded, "What's wrong with her? She looks like a wreck. Has she been eating? Are you absolutely certain she wasn't hurt? Where's Soledad? For chrissakes, O'Hara needs a good night of rest in her bed—" He didn't get out any more before his breath failed him, and he had to sit there in his fucking hospital bed and his damn hospital robe, wheezing angrily at his boss.

"Aaaand there we go," said Vick. "She's fine, Lassiter, or as fine as she's going to be under the circumstances. You gave her quite a scare, you know—you gave all of us quite a scare. I've put the both of you on leave for the next few weeks, although obviously if you need to be out longer for medical reasons we'll adjust that."

"Has she gone home? I'm not joking, Karen, if one of you is coddling me and she's hurt—she isn't suffering from trauma, is she? Has she seen a shrink? I will tell you something, you make her see a shrink if you have to _sit_ on her—"

"You'll both be undergoing routine psychological evaluations and further therapy as necessary," said Vick. "She's fine, Carlton, calm down. She shot Soledad—I told you this before, but you were out of it—after you were stabbed. Soledad herself is in critical care; an intestinal wound like that at close-range is touch-and-go, but O'Hara didn't hit her spine, so there's a chance she'll pull through and go to trial."

"Nothing about that set-up makes sense. She should've had more backup, there were half-a-dozen ways she could've made that warehouse work to her advantage that don't involve—"

Vick held up a hand. "That's enough, Detective. I'll send someone by to take your statement in a few days, but the last thing you need to be doing right now is obsessing over a case—or over O'Hara, who I assure you is far hardier than she appears. However messy this was, you two tracked down and captured a woman who would've been at the top of our most-wanted list if we'd known half the things she'd done. Take it easy. Rest. Heal. The job will still be there."

He scowled at her, but he had an idea that it wasn't as effective as his scowls usually were; she smiled at him in return, and was still smiling when O'Hara came back into the room carrying a coffee cup.

"And Carlton," said Vick, "on a personal note, I am very glad that I won't have to be replacing my head detective. O'Hara, thank you for the coffee; I'll see both of you later. _Much_ later," she added.

When Vick left, O'Hara went back to her chair and settled the book in her lap. "She put us on leave!" Lassiter said. "Can you believe the gall of...she better realize I'll be fit for light duty by the beginning of next week. Maybe the end of this week, if they ever let me out of this damn—O'Hara?"

She was crying. Not sobbing; she wasn't making a sound, but fat tears were pooling in her eyes and rolling down her cheeks, and her fingers were clenched so tightly around the book's spine he could almost hear them creak. "O'Hara, don't—don't do that," he said. His voice cracked in the middle. "I'll take as much leave as you want, I have years, I will stay right here in this hospital bed, just don't—"

She broke. Her shoulders started to heave, and he could hear the gasps she was trying to contain by biting at her lips. Not once did her gaze waver from his face, and he realized that she wasn't blinking away the tears that were beading in her eyelashes.

"O'Hara?" he said. "O'Hara—sweetheart. _Juliet—"_

And then somehow she was with him, curled against his right arm; her face was pressed against his neck, and she wept hard, tears and snot and deep gasps for breath while he held her and stroked her hair and even teared up a little himself. She smelled clean but chemical, like hospital shampoo, and she fit against his his side easily. He found himself remembering the look on Annie Hua's face just before she had stabbed him—that expression of utter desolation.

Dusk was drawing to a close when they both finally settled; she stirred and then pulled away from him, and he let her go.

"Sorry about that," she said, still sounding a little watery as she scrubbed at her face and sniffled. "I didn't—"

"It's fine, O'Hara." He looked at the ceiling and blinked a couple of times. 

"Did you really just promise to take a year off work so I'd stop crying?"

"Yes," he said. "...Please don't make me?"

"As if, partner. You'd go crazy inside the month. You'd probably show up at the station with squirrel casserole to bribe the Chief."

"I would _not_ ," he said, and was about to launch into an itemized protest when he realized her shoulders were shaking again—oh. She was laughing.

After that, they reached something of a comfortable equilibrium. O'Hara refused to go home, even when he went all-out and started talking about how lonely her cats must be. She extended him the courtesy of pretending she wasn't in a relationship with Spencer, which was difficult enough for him to wrap his head around even when he wasn't on industrial-grade painkillers. They took turns reading from her book, and they played countless rounds of gin rummy; and in between everything, they talked.

They talked about the case. "It was too obvious," O'Hara said, sorting through her hand. "It isn't that I don't think Soledad is behind all this, but there's something else going on. I've wondered if..."

"Wondered what?"

"You don't think she wanted to be caught?" She'd pulled her armchair up to his bed so they could play on the edge of the mattress; Lassiter had to be careful not to shift and send cards flying. 

"That implies one of two things," he said. "Either she's in a tight spot and she's more scared of what's on the outside than what's on the inside, or she wanted to be in jail for some other reason."

"Which is scary, when you think about it—jails are breeding grounds for gang activity—"

"Women's prisons, though?"

O'Hara shrugged. "You'd be surprised. Anyway, she doesn't play by the rules."

"What about Hua?" He set down the two of spades, picked up the jack of hearts. "Was she in on the game from the beginning?"

"Oh, you'll like this," O'Hara said. She picked up his two of spades and discarded a seven. "Hua was involved with the de la Cruz kid."

"The victim's brother? Is he even old enough to shave?"

"He's sixteen. Vick says he confessed right away—he was the one feeding Hua her tips. Soledad threatened to kill him if Hua didn't cooperate." She sighed. "I can't shake the feeling that this is going to come back to bite us at some point."

"This one didn't wrap up with a nice pretty bow," Lassiter agreed. "I knock. Two."

"Ten, twenty, twenty-two...twenty-eight," she said. "Which brings us to nine-hundred thirty to eight-hundred thirty-six, my lead."

"Just _shuffle_ , O'Hara, don't _gloat_ about it."

They talked about life outside the office: her cats and his house repair, his reenactment group and her firefighter friend, fishing and comics, their favorite places to run and shoot. "Val's feeding Thumper and Flo," O'Hara said.

"Better hope she's not allergic to cats. Although with that deviated septum, she's probably used to having trouble breathing."

She threw one of the jacks at his head. "Carlton! I didn't hit her nose that hard!"

"Do you regularly abuse your friends?" he said, throwing the jack back and missing wildly. "You might want to rethink your tactics there. You know, I find that offering to help someone out with basic home improvement usually wins them over."

"This is you reminding me that you helped me paint, isn't it. All right, Booker, what's the job? Painting? Plumbing? Wiring? Roofing? Are we knocking out a wall? Wait, _are_ we knocking out a wall?" She was distracted enough by the apparently intriguing thought that her cards started to dip; he almost got a look at them before she snapped them back up to her face.

"I hadn't realized your pressing need to strip my house back to baseboards. No, I was thinking of doing something with the garden out back. The patio's beat to crap, but the beds are in decent shape."

"You want me to get down on my knees and lay bricks," she said.

"Did I say—"

"Beer. Pizza. And"—she held up a finger—" _and_ I get to help you decide what to plant."

"Fine."

They talked about old history—cases, significant others, school and the academy, the trouble she'd gotten into with her brothers, the years he'd spent shoveling horse shit. "Seriously?" she said.

"Started hanging around stables when I was fourteen," he said. "Hank—someone taught me to ride when I was a kid, but I found a bigger operation when I got older and wanted money. They started me mucking stalls and then they let me work the horses. A lot of the boarders were rich idiots who wanted to trot in circles on the weekend and needed someone to take care of their animals during the week. Eventually they even started paying me. Not a bad way to make a buck, and I needed something to keep me busy."

"My first job was at a gas station." Juliet was picking at an ice cream cup; the tray was littered with them. He wanted another, but he didn't want to reach for it and wince—that was a sure path to sending her back into a fit. His stitches were starting to itch, too, and the medical tape was giving him a rash. "Ewan worked there, too, and actually so did Robbie, although by the time I started he was already away at college. He picked up shifts when he was home on breaks, though. Sometimes all three of us were scheduled at the same time, which meant we ended up fighting over who had to clean the bathrooms."

"You put 'em in their places?"

"Not as often as you'd think...but okay, yes. I was sneaky. You don't have to be big when you can outwit the enemy. Ewan was such a moron—all I had to do was act like I was going to cry at the thought of cleaning the men's room and he'd trip over himself volunteering. I didn't have the heart to try it very often, but it worked every time."

"You're close to both of them," he said. 

"I guess so." She licked her spoon. "We were a pack of wild animals when we were little. Mom was pretty much raising us by herself. I think Robbie's the closest to her, but not as close as we are to each other—even now, with me here and Ewan in the Army and Robbie up in San Francisco. What about you?"

"What about me what?" Maybe she'd help him sneak out if he agreed to stay in his own bed for the next couple of days. The antibiotics were screwing with his sense of smell, too.

"You and your sister."

"Lauren?" He thought about that. "No, we aren't close. She's so much younger than me that by the time she was born, I was out of the house most of the time. Haven't talked to my brother in years."

"You talk to your mother, though."

"Sometimes. We fought a lot when I was a kid." He started picking at the tape holding his IV drip in place until O'Hara swatted his hand away. "Looking back, I'm aware that she...didn't have an easy time. My dad was a crapsack, always asking for money and then taking off, and Mom was raised in, uh. A pretty traditional family."

"Religious?"

"As Catholic as they come. She likes women. Screwed with her head a lot. She figured it out, more or less, and at least now we aren't always ripping into each other."

"Huh," O'Hara said. "And you're okay with that?" It occurred to him that they hadn't talked about politics except in the broadest of strokes.

"Hey. Her life partner is a lovely woman, thank you very much." And the NRA was getting a little more diverse in their advertising campaigns, which only meant the possibility of more decent American gun-owners.

"I still can't believe she calls you 'Booker,'" said O'Hara.

"I still can't believe _you_ called me 'Booker,'" he grumbled.

"Did you like 'dollface' better?"

He scowled at her. "No."

"Are you sure, dollface?" She was grinning, bright and uncomplicated and, despite the dark bruises under her eyes, happy. "That doesn't sound real convincing to me, sugar."

"Are you a southern housewife now?" he said. "I don't have to put up with this abuse. In an ideal world, everyone would address me as—"

"Head Detective," she finished. "Detective, if they're a close personal friend."

"Thank you."

"No problem. Detective."

He ended up feeling...well, not grateful that he'd been stabbed by a crazy murderous megalomanical, but not entirely unhappy about the whole situation. He and O'Hara had, out of necessity, started the slow process of cutting themselves apart—extricating all the conversations and habits that had bound them together too closely. They were still at the beginning stages of it, groping their way through, but there'd been enough of a severance in what he could admit was a...well, screw it: an _intimate_ friendship...that he'd started to miss her.

She stayed with him until, finally, the nurses packed up his bottles of horse-pills, stapled instructions to his forehead, and released him back into the wild. He was still a little shaky on his feet, although he groused about the wheelchair nevertheless, until O'Hara swatted at his head and told him to be nice or she'd forget him in one of the waiting rooms. Then they made him wait while O'Hara pulled her car around, and _then_ they helped him to the car and fussed over him until he snapped at the attendant to remove her hands from his person. He may have made an arrest threat in there somewhere. O'Hara extracted the nurse, shut the car door on him, and left him to buckle his own damn seatbelt.

He was happy to spend time with O'Hara, but that didn't mean the entire hospital experience hadn't been a pain in the ass.

There was the other thing, too—'happy' didn't amount to anything, did it?

After she finally shooed the nurse away and swung into the driver's seat, she started rummaging for something in the back straight away; in the cramped interior of her Bug, he was treated to a close encounter with the base of her throat and the sweep of her clavicle where her old t-shirt gaped away from her skin.

"Looking for something?" he said.

"Yeah, just—nng—hang on—"

"Oh. Don't...don't rush on my account," Lassiter said. Here, in the hospital parking lot, they were still justifiably within that white bubble where they'd played cards and talked about lawn car; she could start the car, drive home, and maybe they could carry the bubble with them until they reached his house, maybe they could even take it inside with them; but sooner or later, that bubble would pop, and they'd be back to being strict professionals.

"Got it!" She untwisted herself and dropped a bundle on his lap. Ah—his badge and handcuffs. 

"I thought you might want that back," she said. "No gun, sorry, it's locked up in the evidence room."

He frowned. "My memory might be a little hazy, O'Hara, but I don't recall firing any rounds."

Juliet made a low sound. "You didn't," she said. She was looking straight ahead, her shoulders angled away from him; her hands were tangled together in her laps, the fingers knotted around each other with tension. She had a Christmas tree air-freshener hanging from her rearview mirror that made the whole car smell like slightly musty pine.

"You didn't," she repeated. "I did."

For a split second before the tidal rush of failure swallowed him, his reaction hit him right between the eyes—it was instinctive, it was carnal, and it was nothing he'd confess, even under oath. And then—and then that mile-high wave of shame smacked into him, and of anger. A nineteen-year-old slip of a girl had taken him down. No; he'd _let_ a nineteen-year-old slip of a girl take him down, and he'd left his partner alone, in the dark.

Lassiter was aware of his own cynicism; he was aware that his outlook on life was bleaker than most, although not bleaker than most _cops_ , he was aware that he had tendencies towards self-abnegation and remorse and guilt that were unhealthy. He'd been left reeling over and over again, and while the situations weren't always of his own making, he found in retrospect that far too often, he shouldered sole responsibility. His father leaving, the worst of the bloodlettings with his mother, all those fights and getting hauled down to the SBPD by John Fenich to be formally charged, the shitstorm with Lucinda and the death-on-the-vine of his relationship with Victoria, the sense of personal weakness he battled every time Spencer beat him to a lead and the rolling and entirely selfish pain he felt every time he stopped himself from reaching out to touch Juliet—none of those compared to the realization that he'd left her to guard the door against the wolves by herself.

It took the breath right out of him, that realization, like being stabbed all over again. 

O'Hara was saying something else, though, so he shoved all that rage and all that shame in a neat box, stuck it in the back of his mind, and uncoiled himself. One limb at a time; every muscle in his body had tightened, to the point that it took him three tries to loosen his grip on the seatbelt.

"...you how sorry I am." O'Hara looked about as strung-out as he felt, and her voice was thick. "God, if I'd only realized—or reacted faster to Hua, none of this would've happened. I can't...I am so..."

She was apologizing to him. Christ.

"You've got nothing to be sorry about," he said.

She smacked her hand against the steering wheel. "How can you say that? How the hell can you—"

"Look, O'Hara, this situation is at least as much my fault as yours—"

"I thought you were dead," she said. "You were dying, and that isn't my _fault?_ "

"It's the fault of the woman who stabbed me. Unless you handed her that knife, you had nothing to do with it. It was a dumbass move on my part to drop my guard like that, but Hua hadn't given us any reason to suspect she was being manipulated by a madwoman. _It was not your fault_ , O'Hara."

She nodded, a little jerkily, and he exhaled. There was that bubble burst. The whole drive back to his house, though, he couldn't shake the image of her going into that black maze in the warehouse, chasing after a monster with nothing but grit and his Glock and her own lion's heart. It was an image that would stay with him until he died.

-

She installed him on his couch with his painkillers and antibiotics, a glass of water, a _pitcher_ of water, tissues, a stack of books, a pair of slippers he was fairly certain he hadn't owned yesterday, a blanket, a phone, and a thick stack of instructions. All the while, she chattered at him—trying to cover up her earlier distress, maybe, but there was a simple happiness, too. O'Hara had a way of expressing straightforward pleasure that he'd never encountered in another person. She was resilient.

"I mean it, Carlton, wake me up if you need anything." She was stacking the gauze they'd sent him home with on his kitchen counter. "They don't need to see you again until next week unless there are complications, but I really do _not_ want to take any risks with this. What if you get infected?" She shook her head and pulled out a pack of medical tape. "Now, you should be safe to shower if you—"

"O'Hara," he said.

"What?"

He managed to heave himself to his feet—the slippers were surprisingly plush—and crossed the room to take the tape out of her hand. "Thanks for all the help. Now _go home."_

She drew back and frowned at him. "I'm serious, O'Hara," he continued. "You've done plenty. All I'm going to do for the next couple of days is sleep. No reason you need to stick around for that."

"Of course I do!" she said. "Val's going to drop off a bag for me, I will be perfectly fine on the couch—"

Lassiter started to reach for her face and then winced when the movement pulled on his stitches; he let his hand fall back to his side. "One, you need a decent night's rest—you look like the walking dead, and you're starting to shuffle. Two, I am more than capable of taking care of myself"—she muttered something under her breath—"and that hasn't changed because of an isolated...mishap. Three, we could use a break from each other."

This time she didn't bother muttering. "I don't want a break from you."

"Well, maybe I need a break from you!" he shot back, not because it was true but because he was tired and she was being too stubborn to listen.

"Oh, what, am I supposed to go home and, and...watch ESPN and paint my nails?" Her hands were on her hips, and she looked like she was about three heartbeats from falling asleep on her feet and planting her face in his chest. 

"Yes! Feed your cats! Take a shower! Call your boyfriend! I don't care!"

"Fine!" she shouted, and snatched her keys from the counter. "But you'd better let me know you're alive at least once a day, and I'm coming back next week to pick you up for your follow-up!"

"Fine!"

"Fine! Feel better!" She almost crashed into his doorframe on her way out, and her dramatic exit was ruined when she came back to tug his front door the rest of the way shut; it tended to stick in hot weather.

When he heard her car pull away, he scattered her neat stack of gauze packs, stumbled over to his couch, and took a nap out of sheer anger. He woke up still frustrated, mind fogged over with a low, gray cloud of irritation. His stitches itched, and if he inhaled too sharply his side hurt.

He sent O'Hara a text: _Still alive._

His phone lit up a couple of minutes later, while he was brushing his teeth. _Are you still an ass?_

He thought about how to respond while he took his nightly pill regimen, peeled away his bandages, cleaned the neat line bisecting his ribcage, and taped himself up again. Thinking up retorts managed to mostly distract him from the pain. He discarded _Why don't you come over here and check_ and then _I still HAVE an ass_ and finally _No, you are_ before sending back, _Survey says yes._

She didn't respond for the rest of the night; he would've known if she had, since his sleep was intermittent and never deep. He kept waking up for the most ordinary reasons—car headlights shining through his window, the sound of his refrigerator, sirens off in the distance...

He spent most of the next day in bed, a luxury he hadn't allowed himself since the _last_ time he'd been injured on duty. For a couple of hours in the afternoon he hauled himself upright long enough to eat, shower, text O'Hara ( _Not dead yet_ ), and watch two episodes of _Cops_. He thought about bothering Vick for subsequent details on Immaculata, or at least a couple of cold cases to keep himself busy, but he didn't get around to that until day three.

_"No,"_ she said.

"Come on, a couple of hours reading old files isn't going to hurt—"

_"I'm sorry, was I unclear? You are on medical leave, Detective. I don't want to see you until you can lift your arm above your head without wincing."_

He tried to lift his left arm over his head, failed around the height of his chin, and bit back a curse to avoid giving away the game to Vick. "McNab could drop them off," he suggested.

_"Try again next week, Detective,"_ Vick said. She sounded amused, at least, which meant he hadn't entirely pissed her off. Getting stabbed apparently earned you a certain amount of leeway. _"How's the recovery?"_

"Fine," he said.

_"Uh-huh. Let's keep it on that upward trend. I'll email you some paperwork over the weekend, provided O'Hara doesn't report that you've come down with an infection. How is she, by the way?"_

"She's..." Lassiter swallowed. "Fine."

As far as he knew, at any rate. Vick excused herself after providing him with strict orders not to pester Sergeant Allen, and he went back to _Cops_. After a while he ran out of recorded episodes; he tried to read, but he couldn't concentrate long enough to make it through even a chapter, so he flipped channels aimlessly until he came across _Legally Blonde_ , which O'Hara had cited more than once as one of her favorite movies.

It wasn't half bad. There was a lot of pink, but that was to be expected of O'Hara, and the plot wasn't offensively stupid.

He allowed himself to be slightly more loquacious over the weekend. _Busy?_

_Helping Nadine study for her detective exam,_ O'Hara responded. _So yes._

When the wooziness wore off enough to focus, he went to work on the half-a-dozen house projects he had going. He touched up the front door, even though it took him three hours and an extra nap instead of the expected thirty minutes, and he cleaned out his refrigerator and scrubbed the drawers. On the whole, Lassiter was as rigorously organized at home as he was at work, but more than once O'Hara pointed out his tendency to leave food packaging strewn around his car and kitchen. 

When he started thinking about Soledad and Hua, he sorted through his fishing gear and bought a couple of new lures online. When he woke up in the middle of the night with the surround feel of a sharp piece of metal parting skin and muscle as it slid into his lungs, he applied caulk to his shower fixtures. When he remembered that O'Hara had been left alone with Soledad, with no one to watch her six—and this was always, this was a memory that waited at the edges of his consciousness and struck when he lowered his guard—he fitted a new screen to one of his windows, made beef stew, swept out the garage, and snaked out his drains. The drains didn't necessarily need snaking, but there was always a slim chance that someone would need to borrow his shower, and he didn't trust that the someone wouldn't do something suspicious to the plumbing.

By the night before his first follow-up, he was exhausted, too jittery to sleep half the time and too zoned out to carry himself to bed the other half. He'd weaned himself off the strongest painkillers, but the antibiotic was now screwing with his sense of taste, and even his beef stew tasted bland. Maybe he'd give the leftovers to O'Hara tomorrow.

He was sprawled on the couch again watching _Das Boot_ in German when she texted him. _Are you home?_

_Yep. Still alive, too._

_Good,_ she sent back, and then someone knocked at his door. He was groggy enough to think it was O'Hara for a couple of seconds, and then paranoia took over and he stuffed the Sig he kept behind the TV down the back of his pants before he went to answer.

It really was O'Hara. She was standing on his front step in her pajamas and sandals without a robe or even a jacket, and she was beaming.

"Hi," she said.

"Hi," he said.

"Can I come in?"

He pulled out the Sig and set it on the entry table. "That depends."

"On what?"

"On whether you're still mad at me."

"I am _absolutely_ still mad at you," she said, but she kept grinning as she said it, so he stepped aside—frankly, he'd have let her in even if she'd said it seriously, although he might have kept the Sig out of her reach.

"But I have something to tell you."

"Oh?" He watched as she went through his cupboards, helping herself to a glass and filling it with water from the tap. "There's beef stew if you want it. And don't let me stop you, O'Hara."

She drank half the water straight down and dumped the other half in the sink; she was steadier than the last time he'd seen her, surer, less frantic, and filled out like she'd started eating again—her cheeks were round instead of that sunken hollow, and the dark bruises under her eyes had lifted.

"How's your side, is everything okay?"

"Fit enough for duty," Lassiter said, and, at her doubt, added grudgingly, "Maybe light duty."

"And you have a beard!" Her fingertips twitched before she tucked her hands under her armpits, which certainly did a favor for an area of her anatomy that needed no favors. 

He scoffed. "Please, O'Hara. This isn't a beard. I haven't shaved in a few days, but you know that I'm capable of—"

"Shawn asked if I wanted kids."

Lassiter took that blow face-foward, felt the sting and did his best to shake it off. "That's—good for you, O'Hara." He felt like he'd been knocked out of his body and his place, and he tried to think of what the Lassiter of two years ago would have said to her. "Provided that raising Spencer's snot-nosed brats is one of your life goals."

"I said yes," she confirmed. She was rocking back on her heels with...call it what it was: excitement. No, _anticipation_. 

What did she want from him? She'd be a—he couldn't think it, but he forced himself—an excellent mother. Warm, firm. None of that liberal idiocy about disallowing toy guns. Territorial, probably, and any daughter of hers would be a firecracker, but she would be utterly devoted. His imagination failed him at that point; he had to ease his weight back against the island countertop. Something about his posture felt off, and for the first time in days he realized he wasn't feeling the pull of stitches but rather the absence of his sidearm.

She was still looking at him with that bright thing behind her eyes, but her grip on herself had loosened. She was going still, and he found himself responding to that like he would in the field.

"And then," she said, "he asked if I wanted his kids, and I said no."

There was—something significant here that he was missing. "I...don't follow."

"We broke up." She spit it all out in a rush: "We broke up, Carlton, because I changed my mind. I'm sick of this—I am just sick, and I want to come home to you every night, and if we can't work together I don't care, as long as I get to come home to you. It's..." Her inhalation was shaky. "I thought I could make that go away or that we could get past it or work around it, and this job is—it's so much more than a job, isn't it? And it demands so, _so_ much of us, it forces us to learn what we can sacrifice and what we can't, and what I've learned is that...is that I'll be beside your hospital bed no matter what, and that I want as much of you as I can have. I want all of you. I just want _you."_

The confession rattled around inside his skull, rendered the rest of the world meaningless, and amped up his heart rate until he felt like some hot-blooded horse fresh from the rodeo. He'd ridden a lot of Quarter Horses as a kid—stocky, thick-muscled animals with hearts like wardrums. His pulse now would've put any one of them to shame.

"Carlton?" said Juliet. "Now would be a good time for you to say something."

"Yes," he said.

She was closer now. "Yes?"

"Yes," he said. "Yes. Yes to all of it. Hell. O'Hara, I have been in love with you for so long—"

She was smiling again. "I never thought I'd hear you say it."

"I didn't think I'd ever have the opportunity," Lassiter admitted. She'd drifted closer to him again; her t-shirt had a hole near the collar, maybe from the unfriendly cat with the claws. When he looked down, he saw her feet—yellow flipflops, green toes—were framed between his own. They still weren't quite to the point of touching.

"So what do we do now?"

"Now we..." He thought about that. It was hard to realize all the implications—and there were _so_ many, and not all of them positive, Vick would never let them stay partners, there was every chance they'd fall apart in six months or three years or thirty—when she was looking up at him like that. For six or thirty-six months with her, though, he'd sacrifice a lot. For thirty years, even more; for a lifetime, everything.

"We do this right," he said. "You just split up with Spencer, you need time, I'm still—"

"Healing?"

He pulled a face. "Adjusting. Temporarily."

"To getting knifed," Juliet said helpfully. 

"That," he said. "We need to talk to Vick, too, and there's going to be consequences, which is all the more reason to go about this without any..."

"Kissing?" O'Hara suggested.

If she stood on her toes, or if he slouched any more against the counter, he'd be breathing directly into her mouth. "Any misconduct," Lassiter corrected.

"Right. No sexual misconduct." He was braced against the ledge behind him, and somehow one of her hands found its way between one of his hands and his hip. She was about three-quarters of an inch from having her fingers in his pocket. "What happens after that?" she said.

"We—you are very close."

"Does that bother you?" She was smiling again; he hadn't seen her smile so freely in months.

"No," Lassiter said, "but at this stage, it probably should."

O'Hara withdrew her hand. "No touching. Time to recuperate. Talking to Vick. And then what?"

He had the uncomfortable and foreign sensation that he was flirting with his partner. "I could take you on a date."

"You could," she agreed. When she tilted her head, exposing the line of her throat and drawing his attention to her collarbones, he caught the scent of vanilla. She smelled clean, like she'd just gotten out of the shower; he was fairly certain that whatever she used for soap was vanilla-scented, although it was usually lost beneath the sweeter note of fruit that came from the cloud of her hair. "You're absolutely sure about that no kissing rule?"

"I'd like to be able to tell the Chief with complete honesty that this has not gone further than talking," Lassiter said. "In light of that, I suggest we move this conversation somewhere else."

There was no need to tell her he meant 'somewhere with other people,' because she retreated to her side of the kitchen. "Diner? Although, eugh, I'm in my pajamas."

Lassiter, who was wearing only a t-shirt and a pair of sweatpants himself, failed to find a problem with this, although under normal circumstances the thought of appearing inappropriately dressed in public would have revolted him. "It's midnight. Nobody will be there anyway."

"You say that, but with our luck, we'll run into someone we arrested. Or a judge. Or the mayor."

He cleared his throat. "If you really want to stay here, O'Hara—"

"No," she said, and pointed at him. Most people turned their palms inward when they pointed, but O'Hara kept hers parallel to the ground, jabbing her finger overhand. "No. I'm onto you. I am so on to you, Carlton." She picked up her keys and shook them. "We are going to the car. You can follow _if_ you stay three feet behind me."

"We aren't going to maul each other in the middle of the front lawn," he grumbled, but he went to find his shoes and then followed O'Hara outside at more or less her prescribed distance. She hadn't locked her car, which he noticed with a faint astonishment, but he was promptly distracted when after folding himself into the passenger side, he found a gold hair stuck to his seat.

"I don't think I could sleep tonight if I tried," O'Hara said. She had apparently continued talking to him as she circled around to her side, unaware that he couldn't hear her through the windows. "You look like you could use it, have you been sleeping? The doctor told you not to push yourself too early, and I told him, I _told_ him that you weren't going to listen—"

"I am _fine,"_ he said, and then, as an experiment, added, "Juliet."

She'd kept talking over him, but she broke off in the middle of her sentence to grin when he said her name. Without any conscious decision, he found himself grinning back, and then after a couple of minutes, O'Hara said, "I'm sitting in the middle of the street, aren't I."

"Yes," said Lassiter.

"I should probably move." 

He smelled the vanilla again, and it threw him back to the first time he'd noticed that scent. It was shortly after they'd met; he'd been angry about something, he'd been angry a lot when she'd first transferred in, and then he'd felt a pressure against his forearm. He'd looked down to find that his partner—this greener-than-green sweet-tempered rookie who shook when she drew her weapon, who gave him crap like she'd known him his whole life, who could drive a pursuit vehicle like nobody he'd ever seen—was holding him back. And then he'd realized, no, she wasn't gripping him like she was trying to restrain him; she'd been trying to ground him. He'd caught the scent off her then; it was mingled with gunpowder and something that reminded him of new suits.

"Move," Lassiter said. "...Right."

To indulge his pride, he forced himself to look away from her as she drove. Kekoa was going to give him such a load of crap about this, and he honestly couldn't bring himself to care.

The City Diner was empty except for one white-haired woman reading a paperback while she smoked a cigarette. It was disgusting, and it was illegal, and Lassiter didn't even have to work to ignore her as they seated themselves at their usual booth. As a concession, he let O'Hara have the side with the line-of-sight to the door. The waitress brought coffee with her but didn't bother with menus. "Haven't seen you kids in here for a while," she said, although she was—if older than O'Hara—definitely younger than Lassiter. "You two want your usual?"

"That would be perfect, and take your time, we aren't in a hurry," said O'Hara. "And if you don't mind, I would love some—"

"Extra syrup, got it," said the woman. She wisely left the coffee pot on the table, and before she left she picked the sugar bowl from the neighboring booth and parked it in front of Lassiter.

O'Hara was so busy making calf-eyes that she almost missed her mug the first time she tried to pour sugar in it. "Hi," she said.

"Hi," he said, and dumped creamer all over the table. O'Hara giggled. He tried to scowl at her as he grabbed for the napkin holder and cleaned up his mess, but the ire kept sliding off his face. It was like every reaction except that effervescent adoration had been sprayed with Teflon.

O'Hara pulled out another napkin and dropped it on the smear that had started to aggregate salt and other spilled debris. "Are we still moving to Florida?"

"What?" He dribbled a little water from his glass onto the whole mess and tried wiping again. "No. Absolutely not."

"Are we moving to Sedona? Oh for God's sake, Carlton—" She reached across the table, took the water glass out of his hands, did something technical with the fresh napkin, and lobbed the wad into the trash can beneath the hostess station some fifteen feet away.

"Sedona? Are you making _retirement_ plans already?"

"No," she said. "Yes. Fine, yes, I am making retirement plans."

"And what exactly is wrong with Santa Barbara? The schools are fine, the crime rate is—well, it's a known quantity—"

"I'm not talking about where we're going to raise our kids, the school district has no bearing on where we retire unless we're talking property values. Unless you have some pressing need to be in a climate with—Carlton?" She shoved her coffee aside and leaned in to peer at him. "Are you okay?"

"I'm perfectly fine," he said.

"Are you sure? Because you look like you're going to pass out, but you also look like you're...happy about passing out. What is it?"

"Nothing," he said, and then immediately contradicted himself by adding, "Our kids."

O'Hara smiled back at him, showing all of her teeth and almost nothing of her eyes. She had to be kneeling on her seat—she was that far across the table, braced on her forearms and pretty damn close to having her face smashed against his. "Yeah," she said, and then she flinched back so hard he heard her hit the booth. "No, wait, I am so sorry, I don't even know if you want kids—"

"Yes," he said.

"Oh," she said. The smile returned, a little shyer this time; he'd never seen Juliet shy. "Really?"

"How many?" he countered.

She didn't even think about that one. "Two."

"Sounds good. Two kids, raise 'em in Santa Barbara, retire to Sedona."

They were briefly interrupted when the waitress delivered their (breakfast?) (dinner?) food, spun the syrup so the handle faced O'Hara, and topped off their coffees. "Cheers for cleaning up his mess," she told O'Hara, and departed. They hadn't broken eye contact once through the entire procedure.

" _Maybe_ Sedona," said O'Hara. "I reserve the right to change my mind about retirement. This is ridiculous—Carlton, you realize this is ridiculous, right? We haven't even talked to Vick yet."

"She isn't going to _fire_ us," Lassiter retorted, and then he remembered the disciplinary list in his file. Most of the offenses were minor—unnecessary discharge of his weapon, verbal abuse of suspects, crap like that—but there was one very glaring omission that had cost his last partner her position. All at once he realized that while what was going to happen with O'Hara was drastically different from what had happened with Barry, he had the perspective of the interior. From the outside, it was going to look like he was, once again, abusing his position and the trust of a subordinate.

Vick was reasonable, there was that. Barry's transfer had ultimately been her own choice, even if it had been a choice strongly suggested by their superiors; there were some cities where a detective, particularly a high-ranking one, could get around the fraternization rules, but Santa Barbara had always maintained a strict policy against romantic liaisons between partners. Despite the trouble it had caused him, Lassiter respected that policy—there were good reasons why partners shouldn't be involved. At least there was a fair chance that disclosing to Vick and asking for new assignments would go a long way towards smoothing things over with the upper management, even if it would do nothing to quell the rumors.

"Don't you dare," O'Hara said.

"What?" His eggs were getting cold.

"You're planning to beat me to Vick," she said, "probably so you can make some stupid sacrifice like getting yourself fired just so I don't take any flak for this. I swear, if you throw yourself on the bomb I will make sure that whatever is left of you does not have a happy existence. I can make your life _painful."_

"There's going to be repercussions, and even if we keep this under wraps for another six months, people are going to talk. That's a black mark on your record, whether it's official or not." He felt like he was arguing uphill with her; the way she was gripping her knife wasn't at all conducive to cutting waffles, but it was very conducive to stabbing someone. Lassiter was familiar with stabbings.

"My record speaks for itself. And, and you know what? We have done nothing wrong, we're taking all the correct measures—"

"There's going to be some kind of review by Internal Affairs," he said. "This isn't getting tied up with a pretty little bow just because we 'disclose' to the Chief." Her fingers tightened around the knife when he did air-quotes.

"Fine," she said. "Then we don't disclose to Vick, we stay partners, and we sleep together anyway."

"What? No! We are not going to run around behind everyone's backs like we have something to be ashamed of—"

"Well, buster, that's your only other choice. Deal." She stuffed half a waffle in her mouth and chewed furiously at him.

Lassiter decided that this was one of those rare occasions when open surrender was an acceptable option. "We can talk to Vick tomorrow."

She chewed a little more, swallowed, and said, "Good. We'll go before your appointment. I'm picking you up. Ugh, sorry, hold on just a minute—" He watched as she slid out of the booth, marched in her flip-flops to the woman smoking at the counter, and issued a verbal warning that smoking indoors in the city of Santa Barbara was a misdemeanor. The smoker eyed her, sizing up how serious she was, and when O'Hara refused to give ground, extinguished the cigarette. "Thank you," O'Hara said, and returned to her waffles and Lassiter.

Oh look, there was the adoration again—not that it ever faded completely, but he was back to being incapable of summoning even minor annoyance. This was going to wreck havoc with his reputation. "You are magnificent," he said, and it didn't feel entirely corny when it came out of his mouth.

"You aren't half bad yourself," O'Hara said, and then she grinned at him and stretched her hand across the table so it rested next to his; they weren't touching, but the potential was present, and it was everything.

-

She dropped him off at two and picked him up at nine, which left plenty of time to catch four hours of sleep, shave, rehearse what he was and what he was not going to say to Vick, and go over an update on the Immaculata case with a fine-toothed comb. Soledad was still under heavy guard at the hospital; she'd pulled through, but she was refusing to speak. The reports painted her as curiously serene. Lassiter was waiting for the other shoe to drop, and he had the feeling that she'd keep him waiting for a long time.

When O'Hara knocked on his door, he was already dressed in a shirt and slacks; his shoulder rig felt like too much effort, so he dug out the pancake holster he'd used when he fractured his collarbone and one of his backups, a sweet little 9mm with skating tape strapped around the grip. Frankly, even his suit jacket felt too heavy on muscles that were trying to compensate in all kinds of fun new ways, but he didn't really need that until they were at the station.

Juliet had had the same thought—she was in her battle dress, too, her hair pulled back and her aviators hanging from the front of her blouse. "Ready, partner?" she said.

"Yep," said Lassiter, and locked the door behind them.

They didn't talk on the way to the station. He would've preferred to be in the driver's side of the Crown Vic, but that, along with the silence, could be chalked up to nerves. He'd only admit it under oath, but his stomach felt like it was trying to chew a hole in itself, and O'Hara was, if anything, worse off than he was. 

When she pulled into their usual parking spot, she shut off the engine immediately but didn't open her door. He waited and was rewarded when, after a moment of reflection, she said, "Remember when you told Vick you wanted to transfer partners?"

Oh, that stunt. "Yeah," he said.

"Why did you?"

Lassiter snorted in sourness and disbelief. "Why the hell do you think, O'Hara?"

"God," she said. She was wearing her sunglasses; he wished he could see her eyes, but he couldn't begrudge her every inch of armoring she had in her repertoire. "You caught on before I did, didn't you?"

"Come on, that makes it sound like I was hiding something from you for months—not to mention it gives me credit I don't deserve, and you know I only like credit I do deserve."

"Do you ever," she said, but her lips curled as she said it. "Seriously, though."

"I had...a hunch," Lassiter said carefully. "A gut feeling. Not much more than that. I never thought we'd end up here."

"Some days I think we never could have ended up anywhere else. It still kinda feels like we're going to face the firing squad, though."

He couldn't bring himself to cross that barrier and touch her, but he could and did pop open the glove compartment and rummage around in all her makeup and tampons until he found half a roll of Lifesavers. "Here," he said, and used his thumb to drop one in her palm.

"Thanks," she said.

"Everything's going to be fine."

"You really think so?" She put the Lifesaver—green against the pink of her mouth—between her lips, and stared hard into his face. "You really do think so."

"I do."

"What was the plan again?"

She was twisted in her seat; if he followed the line of her back down to her waist, he could tell where the grip of her Glock bowed out her shirt. It was the way her hands were fidgeting, though, that let him name the tide washing over him as tenderness. 

"You, me," he said, "and a house in Sedona where the kids can't bother us."

"Sounds like a dream come true," she said. "All right. All right, Carlton, let's do this." She held out her hand. He gave her the high-five, wrapped his fingers around her palm, squeezed once; and then he let her go.

Vick was in her office. Lassiter ignored all the people trying to catch his attention—even McNab, who was about as difficult to ignore as a redwood—and cut a path straight to her with O'Hara at his heels. The Chief looked expectant, and a little amused, when she saw them, and she waved them inside without making them knock.

"Detectives," she said. "I can't say I'm surprised to see either of you, but you are on mandated leave right now."

"This is important, Chief," said O'Hara. "And it won't take very long, I promise."

"It is an extremely critical piece of information pertaining to an open case?"

Lassiter and O'Hara shared a look. "Uh..." he said. "No. Not strictly. As a matter of fact, strictly speaking, it doesn't have anything to do with any case."

"Except in a very broad sense," O'Hara jumped in.

"Well, you've certainly...intrigued me," Vick said. "Please, sit. Let's hear what all this is about."

They took adjacent seats in the line-up of chairs before Vick's desk, so they were shoulder-to-shoulder. Lassiter reminded himself that he wouldn't be losing that, that _they_ wouldn't be losing that, and took a deep breath—

O'Hara beat him to the draw. "Carlton and I intend to pursue a romantic relationship," she said. "To that end, we are formally disclosing the intention and requesting that we both be paired with new partners."

Vick's brows climbed towards her hairline, but she maintained a neutral expression that did her credit as she leaned back in her chair. "I see."

"We understand that we're opening ourselves up to an internal review," Lassiter said. The gaze Vick aimed at him sharpened. "I'm aware of what this looks like, Chief—"

"Do you?" Vick said, and Lassiter understood that whatever came next was going to hurt. "Detective O'Hara, has Detective Lassiter in any way sexually coerced you with threats about your work or your position with the Santa Barbara Police Department or offered you special treatment in exchange for sexual favors?"

And to her credit, O'Hara took the question with clear, steady eyes. "He has not," she said, and then added, "and you don't seriously believe he has, or you wouldn't have asked me that with him in the room."

"Fair enough," Vick said. "At what point did this relationship start?"

He started to answer, and O'Hara cut him off. "It hasn't. We've discussed the possibility, but we agreed that neither of us wanted to start anything behind the department's back." She hesitated, and he was aware that she was playing the room—playing it beautifully, and playing it with absolute sincerity. "Chief, I'm sure you're aware that after a life-threatening incident in the field, certain things start to come to light that...that maybe weren't acknowledged before."

"I am," said Vick.

"I'm not willing to let this go," O'Hara said. "It may create some difficulties in the present, but in the long run this is the best choice for us—for me."

Vick considered that, looking hard first at O'Hara, then at Lassiter himself, and last out her window into the station proper. "Well," she finally said, "while I can't say this doesn't come as a shock, if you hadn't convinced me, O'Hara, then the besotted look Detective Lassiter is wearing would have done the trick. You both realize there are going to be consequences for this decision, and I am disappointed to be losing one of our best partnerships, but we— _I_ —have a vested interest in keeping both of you working here."

"Oh thank God," Lassiter said, and started breathing again. 

O'Hara slugged him in the arm; he barely felt it. "See?" she hissed. "See, I said you didn't have to get yourself fired!"

"In fact," said Vick, "this will be a good opportunity to make some much-needed changes. I'm going to strongly recommend that both of you extend your leave indefinitely, until I can finish the necessary restructuring, but I think by next month we'll be in ship-shape again. There will be a review, of course, but it will be largely a formality. And on a personal note, let me be the first to wish you the best of luck." She smiled at them. "I think you're both going to be just fine, Detectives."

"Thanks, Chief."

"Thank you, Karen," Lassiter said.

The smiled dropped away from the Chief's face. "There's just one more thing," she said. "This directly affects you, Carlton. It gives me no pleasure to say this, but while O'Hara's record is clean, yours is somewhat spottier, especially in this particular area—and while you have followed protocol today, you understand that this still looks like a pattern. I feel safe saying that your job here is secure, and that your reputation for excellence will earn you leeway, but there is going to be some kind of disciplinary action here. I don't yet know what form that action is going to take, but it may involve a pay cut or demotion in grade."

"You aren't going to bust him back down to uniform, are you?" O'Hara demanded. "Because if you do, then you'll have to demote me, too. Or fire me. If you're going to punish him, I will quit right here, right now—"

"O'Hara! No, I will not be demoting Lassiter from his position as detective!"

"Oh," said O'Hara. "Sorry, Chief."

"Apology accepted. Lassiter, you've been awfully quiet over there."

"Just...reflecting," Lassiter said. "I—" He shook his head, trying to dispel the feeling that he'd gotten away with something. "I will certainly accept whatever disciplinary measures you deem appropriate," he said, "particularly in the interest of safeguarding O'Hara's reputation. _Don't_ go there, O'Hara," he said when she whirled on him. "You shouldn't have to pay because I screwed up in the past."

She looked like she wanted to stick her tongue out at him, but she refrained in deference to the setting and the audience. "Ugh," she said, "fine. I don't like it, but I'll go along with it."

"Thank you so much," said Vick, dry humor restored. "And _off_ -the-record, I'd recommend that you give things around here a little time to settle before you go public with your new status. It's your choice, of course, and I'll support you either way, but you might find the situation easier if you ease people into it." She paused for a minute, and then said, with what might have been a wicked gleam in her eye, "I started dating my history TA the day after I finished his class. Now _that_ made people talk."

Juliet laughed and then clapped a hand over her mouth. "Sorry, it's just—"

"Oh, no, I daresay I deserve to be laughed at," said Vick.

Lassiter rolled his eyes and slouched, taking some of the pressure off of his side. "We had planned on taking it slow anyway," he said. "And O'Hara just got out of another relationship—ow! Why do you keep hitting me?"

"Oh, come on, you big baby," said O'Hara, who got punchy when she was happy. "I've waited long enough, and I don't mind waiting a little longer, but I am not going to stand around so you can run through your 'relationship milestones' checklist. I mean—" Her eyes went wide, like she'd just remembered Vick was still in the room. "I mean that I've already waited...days, and that waiting more...days..."

Lassiter jumped in with, "Would be unnecessarily painful in light of the—of the—"

"Of Carlton getting knifed!" O'Hara spit out. He wished she wouldn't call it that.

"Uh-huh," said Vick. "And on that note, and as illuminating as this meeting has been, I do have a police department to run. Get out of here, enjoy your leave. I'll be in touch."

"But you aren't going to fire him, are you?" said O'Hara, forcing Lassiter to herd her out before Vick lost her calm and threatened to fire both of them for being nuisances. It was a threat she'd made before.

He managed to get her out of the station before she stopped to talk to anyone else, too; as soon as they made it to the car, he stripped off his jacket and tie, tossed them in the backseat, and gingerly stretched his arm over his head. O'Hara was at his side immediately.

"Are you okay?" she said. "Did you get enough sleep last night? And oh crap, I hit you! Did you take your pain medication? Carlton, you have to take your pain medication."

"I'm—" She shot him a look. "A little tender," he admitted. "It's nothing serious, O'Hara, I'm not going to wilt. Quit looking at me like that." Her frown, which verged on a pout, deepened. "I mean it. I might have pulled a muscle, but everything's healing like it should." He braced one hand on the roof of the car and twisted, testing the strain, but all that did was make him aware of how close O'Hara was tucked along his side, nearly under his arm.

"Tell the doctor about it," she said. "Don't look at _me_ like that—I'm not trying to smother you, but he might be able to give you some exercises to prevent that."

"If you say so," Lassiter said. He doubted it, but he was willing to humor her. Begrudgingly, if only to maintain pretense.

And somehow his arm was still out and O'Hara was still _right there_. "I'm having an adrenaline let-down, like I just got out of a shoot-out," she said. "It was good to tell the Chief, you know? And now that it's over with, I just feel this huge wave of..."

"Relief?"

"Definitely, _definitely_ relief." She leaned her head back against the Bug's roof and tucked her hands behind the small of her back; she looked like she could fall asleep there, eyes closed, taking in the sunshine. As he watched, a smile broke over her face. "And happy," she said. "I feel happy."

He cleared his throat. "Good."

"We should probably get you to your appointment," she said. 

"Probably so," said Lassiter, but he was as reluctant to move as she was, and they stood together in the parking lot, soaking in the light and warmth, until one of the squad cars took off with sirens blaring. They stirred at the same time, and then O'Hara took him to his doctor's appointment. The hospital was all kinds of backed up, but O'Hara sat with him while he waited, and told him about a study she'd read on the endemic of white-collar fraud, and listened to him detail all the reasons Santa Barbara needed to implement more outreach for at-risk youth in turn, even though she'd heard his reasons enough times to recite them by heart.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My love as always to [andthenisay](http://andthenisay.tumblr.com/), who was a fantastic cheerleader despite being caught up in a pretty intense spiral of her own, and to [slybrunette](http://slybrunette.tumblr.com/), who was...basically everything. (Have I mentioned recently that you inspire me???) 
> 
> Please note that the rating in this chapter is not for case-related violence but for consensual banging between two detectives.

Nadine had run off with Juliet's case notes again. They were both still getting used to the partnership, and one of the biggest adjustments for Juliet was that Nadine, although a lot more flexible, tended to back-end her paperwork. It was all impeccably filled out, of course, but she often left it until the last minute, turning it in just before the monthly statistics were due. While Juliet did have options—as the senior detective in the partnership, especially a senior detective paired with a rookie fresh from patrol, she was responsible for setting the tone—the thing was that Nadine hadn't actually _failed_ to file any of her reports yet.

At least she was sharp. "Hey! Hey! Earth to O'Hara, you staring at homeboy again?" She waved her hand in front of Juliet's face.

"What!"

Nadine looked pointedly at Juliet, and then swiveled her head and looked even more pointedly at Carlton. He was facing off with Leilani Kekoa, _his_ new partner; his expression was starting to develop that obstinate cast that meant she was telling him something he didn't want to hear. He'd taken off his jacket and tie and rolled up his sleeves, exposing the long, sinewed lines of his forearms, and his head was propped on his hand, two fingers extended against the side of his face. The pointer was tapping intermittently against his cheek while he thought.

Juliet was allowed to look now. She tried to do it, well, _covertly_ , but occasionally everything just sort of—got away from her.

"I was thinking," she told Nadine.

"I'm going to be nice and believe you," Nadine said. "Anyway, here's your stuff on the Lake Street burglary." She dropped the folder on Juliet's inbox and shuffled her feet a little. "Uh. Sorry I keep accidentally borrowing your notes."

"It's fine, I'd only be angry if I didn't know you were checking them against yours. Although..."

"Yes, Obi-Wan?"

"I know you like to do all your reports at once," Juliet said, "but one day we're going to get slammed with a ton of cases at the same time, and one or two of them are going to be the kind that require a lot of legwork, and _then_ you're going to have to deal with everything all at once. I'm not saying you should change your work habits, and I'm not saying that you aren't capable of pulling that kind of thing off so you don't have to focus the boring details as often, but I am giving you a heads-up that it isn't always this slow."

"Got it, Obi-Wan," Nadine said. "That's a lot more helpful than telling me that I can bribe Detective Lassiter with coffee as long as I put enough sugar in it. I don't think he actually accepts bribes. He drank the whole coffee, and then he told me that like hell was I getting a murder my first month on the squad."

"Huh. It always worked for me," Juliet said.

"Yeah, I don't even have to wonder about why that is. What we really need to do is figure out how to bribe Detective Kekoa—I mean, even if they share the duties, she is technically the head detective, and that means she can override him and give us something interesting to do."

"We'll get to interesting. This burglary was interesting!"

"You don't get out much, do you?" said Nadine.

"Okay, maybe not," Juliet conceded, "but I know for a fact there hasn't been a murder since you started. Everyone else is messing with you when they talk about all the interesting cases they're working, I promise."

Nadine had her thumbs hooked under her suspenders; when she heard this, she let them snap back against her shirt and then winced. "Aw no, really?"

"Yep," said Juliet.

"Man. All right, I'm going to go do some paperwork. Maybe if I cross all my 'T's, they'll let us move up to an arson."

"Probably not."

"Jaywalking?"

"You wish, Padawan," said Juliet, and grinned back when Nadine waved her off and retreated to her own desk.

It had been slow, but after the ongoing mess with Soledad, Juliet was glad for slow. She had plenty of paperwork of her own to wade through, too; under the file on the Lake Street burglary were sheaves of progress reports and notes for court mixed in with follow-ups on her cases with Carlton. She pulled one out—funnily enough, it was labeled MARCONI, ARSON, 2/19 in Carlton's writing—and flipped it open.

There was a yellow post-it note in the same hand stuck to the inside: _FREE TOMORROW?_ She peeled it off, stashed it in her desk, and rummaged for her own pack of post-its. They'd turned this into a game; it was, Juliet had to admit, an incredibly low-key way to flirt, but when their case files were so full of notes anyway, it was fun to come across something a little less business-oriented every now and then. 

_FOR YOU, DEFINITELY,_ she wrote back, and stuck it in the file. Carlton's desk wasn't technically on the way to the bathroom, but she managed to drop the folder casually on his desk as she passed without interrupting his conversation with Leilani. She actually did go to the bathroom after that, and then poured herself a cup of coffee; by the time she got back to her desk, there was an unlabeled white envelope stuck to her monitor.

She didn't try to catch his eye, but she didn't bother to hide her smile as she opened the envelope. Inside were two tickets: Dodgers v. Angels, 3:00 tomorrow. Are you serious, Juliet thought, and couldn't stop herself from bouncing in her seat a little in anticipation.

She had to wait until Carlton and Leilani scooted off to talk to Vick before she could retaliate; one the top of a sticky note, she drew a smiley face with 'xoxo' under it. One of her eyes stayed on the Chief's office the whole time, but they were still cloistered, thankfully. She scribbled at the bottom, _UP TO A RUN TONIGHT?_ There was just enough time for her to scramble over to his desk, slip the note in one of his drawers, and take up a casual post by the coffee pot before he returned. After a couple of minutes, she couldn't keep up the pretense of sorting through the sweeteners, so she slipped off to the supply closet to requisition a new pack of post-its.

When she came back, there was a note stuck to her coffee mug: _PICK YOU UP AT SIX._ A six o'clock rendezvous would leave her plenty of time to go home and change. In the meantime, Carlton had vanished; so had Leilani. They were off on some new case, presumably one more interesting than a couple of burgled lawn flamingos. She took her time planning her next response while she cleaned out her emails. Vick had sent a notice about a staff meeting next week (donuts to be provided), and there was the usual spate of tips from her contacts, follow-ups from cases both old and current, and the more boring office memos that managed to plague even police departments. They were going to wax the floors next week, and apparently knowing that was important enough for the civilian manager to send out three notices.

All that time stalling let her build up her nerve, and before she could lose it again, she wrote, _PACK A BAG?_ on her notepad, pulled off the top sticky, and hid it in Carlton's desk drawer again. She didn't like using the same hiding place twice in a row, but he'd be livid if someone else stumbled across that one. He might be livid anyway. He probably wouldn't be livid. Oh God, Juliet hoped he was going to like the idea, they hadn't even been on a date yet, but she wanted him to spend the night enough to at least ask. 

Nadine dragged her out to Snarf's for sandwiches on their lunch break, and Juliet spent most of the stroll over lost in her own head. Since Nadine was talking on the phone to someone—probably her boyfriend, whom Juliet had yet to meet—she didn't even have company to distract her. She was...be honest about it: now that the moment was here, she was nervous.

It was ridiculous to be nervous about Carlton. She didn't have doubt, or not much of it, that they could function and function well in a relationship, and they knew each other to the core. Everything else was only detail—

But at the same time, she'd never pictured herself as the kind of person who'd be willing to put the career she held so dear on the line for a man, and wasn't that exactly what she'd done? They'd come out all right, although Carlton still deflated a little every time someone addressed Leilani as 'Head Detective Kekoa,' but Juliet was beginning to understand the sacrifices she was prepared to make for him, and the readiness with which she would make those sacrifices. She didn't remember much of the night she'd shot Soledad after Carlton had been stabbed; she knew she'd thrown up on the Chief's shoes, and that they'd found her kneeling beside Carlton's body with his gun still in her hand. When she forced herself to think beyond that, she always ended up flinching away from the black pit that yawned beneath those memories. The enormousness of what she felt for him terrified her.

Those details weren't entirely unimportant, either. Juliet knew herself well enough to admit that she wouldn't be happy in any relationship where sexual compatibility was an issue, and the truth was that she hadn't so much as kissed him, never mind sleeping with him. It seemed trite to worry about when she'd upended part of her life just for a shot at being together, but what if he was terrible in bed? What if he thought _she_ was? What if they were only mediocre together? Practice could fix a lot, but if they had a basic disagreement in major preferences, that could present a problem. She liked sex, and she liked it often; she orgasmed easily, and she—the best way to put it—loved men, the way they felt and smelled and responded; but she was also aware that she was, in the grand scheme of things, fairly vanilla.

She'd seen enough brutality in her line of work that she'd long ago lost even the possibility of interest in pain as a part of her bedroom life. She didn't like sex in public places, or at least places where there was a chance of being caught, and her favorite acts were all a little...boring? Traditional? God, what would Carlton even expect? Had she shaved her legs yesterday? Should she shave them again today?

Nadine kept up the conversation by herself while they plowed their way through lunch, but Juliet was still preoccupied by the time they got back to work. She'd teased him one time about there being plenty of spark between them, but what if that spark fizzled out? Or what if they discovered an incompatibility in some other area? Carlton had said he'd wanted kids, but what if he expected them now? Did she want kids right away? Which of them would take care of a baby? She knew him better than to believe he'd expect her to stay at home with a toddler, but they'd still have to figure out some kind of childcare—and what if he was in debt? He seemed frugal. If she was being honest, "cheap" was a better description, but that might be a compulsive habit to make up for a secret gambling addiction.

When she walked into the station and saw the steaming cup of coffee waiting for her at her desk, she had to laugh at herself. She knew he didn't gamble, and if with all their vast differences they'd managed to forge a working relationship in the field, they'd do just fine in the home. It was unlike her to worry so much at the beginning of a relationship anyway, and she realized the only reason she had been so tense was that, for the first time, she was thinking and thinking seriously about the long-term.

Carlton was still absent, but she knew he had to be around; the coffee was in her favorite oversized Wonder Woman mug, and made with plenty of sugar and no cream. She sipped it as she started going through piles of paperwork, skimming over the monthly statistics report and a clipping from a local paper that someone had saved for her. It was about Immaculata, and although she didn't want to read it, she did anyway.

The next packet she picked up was dense enough with numbers and medical jargon that she assumed it was courtesy of their new staff coroner, but then she saw the name stamped at the top. It still took her a couple of minutes to work through what she was looking at, though, and then she realized it was a copy of Carlton's bloodwork.

She'd asked him if he wanted to spend the night, and in his own, completely obtuse way, he'd answered, letting her know that he was free of communicable diseases; the results were dated to a week and a half ago, and she had to roll her eyes at him at least a little. It was maybe the most unromantic way a man had ever invited her to bed, but it was so utterly, practically _him_ that she still felt herself start to flush. And anyway—she had her own bloodwork, dated to two days before his. Her hands trembled a little from anticipation as she dug it out, and she couldn't stop herself from thinking that maybe they were well-matched. Even when he was a complete mystery, she could still anticipate him.

She carried her results and the Immaculata article over to his desk and dropped him on his keyboard. From this angle she could see him down the hall, his arms folded across his chest as he talked to Leilani and the Chief. A wildly irrational part of her thought about leaving her underwear in his desk drawer or something ridiculous like that—doing one of those things she always read about in magazines but had never attempted—before she got a handle on herself and dismissed the idea. Mild, discreet flirtation was one thing, but she had zero interest in tarnishing her professional world by dragging her personal life into it any more than she already had.

For the rest of the afternoon she let the job fill her head; she never entirely lost that thrilling undertow of anticipation that hummed along her veins, but when she felt it tugging at her, she took a deep breath and refocused on writing up her notes on the Lake Street burglary, or on rehearsing her testimony for the arson case's preliminary hearing, or on her correspondence with a federal liaison who was coordinating the charges against Soledad. Anyway, she told herself, by this point the anticipation was just part of the dance, and it wasn't like she'd have to wait _that_ much longer.

At five o'clock she neatened her desk, switched off her computer, and left—for once—on time, with nothing more than a lingering glance at Carlton. He was scowling at something on his monitor, and she smiled and shook her head a little as she walked to her car.

She listened to Madonna as she drove home, hitting the speed limit the whole way, and when she cut the engine and the music she kept on humming to herself as she went inside to greet the cats. Thumper even came out long enough to rub perfunctorily against her calf before he disappeared; Flower, though, followed from room to room as Juliet checked that her bathroom was clean and her sheets fresh and that she had enough food in the refrigerator to last them through the weekend. She did, although it was all, well, pretty plain—she didn't take much time to cook for herself, and the effort required to boil some pasta or toss together a salad was the limit of her culinary endurance. 

Home secure, she changed into workout clothes and her trail running shoes. She didn't bother finding her iPod, although she often took advantage of Carlton's company to listen to music while she ran, but she did set out her watch next to her keys and a bottle of water, and then she went to the bathroom, wiped off her makeup, brushed out her hair, and pulled it all back. She'd gotten distracted teasing Flower with a makeup brush when the doorbell rang.

"I wonder who that could be," she said, and offer Flo once last chance to bat at the brush with her paw.

"Mrr," said Flower, and tried to grab the whole brush and run away with it. Juliet had to wrestle it back from her, and then she dropped it in a drawer where it would be safe from prying cats and went to answer the door.

Carlton was standing at her door with a duffel bag slung over his shoulder; he was wearing basic running clothes, old shorts and a gray t-shirt from the Antietam National Battlefield. She'd noticed that his casual shirts were always either long enough for his lanky frame but baggy through the waist, or too short and just a little snug through the chest and shoulders. This one, thankfully, was the latter.

"Hi," he said, once she'd opened the door.

"Hi," said Juliet, and then, because she couldn't wait any longer, she stepped forward, lifted up on her tiptoes, threaded her hands through his hair, and kissed him.

He took a second to respond; he was always a little slow to process new or unexpected information, but then she felt him shift and the duffel bag hit the ground. His right hand came up to hold her between the shoulder blades, as it always did when they hugged, but his left hand landed low on her waist, and he used that anchor to pull her closer. His thumb pressed into the base of her spine, and she felt a jolt race from that spot through the rest of her body, lighting up her skin.

Her toes finally started to protest the position and she sank down, tugging him with her so his forehead stayed pressed to hers. "Hi, Carlton," she said again.

He grinned at her; there was no hint of a smirk there, no cynicism at all. "Setting the bar pretty high there, O'Hara," he said. "Now I'm going to expect a greeting like that every time I see you."

"Maybe I want to spoil you," she said, and because she could, kissed him again. She was less languid about it this time, pressing against him just long enough to let them both have another taste before she remembered they were standing in full view of her neighborhood. She stepped back and beckoned him inside, but he wouldn't let her drop his gaze; his eyes were hot, the blue of a gas fire.

He dropped his bag inside and offered his hand to the cats, who had come out to satisfy their curiosity and say hello. Thumper butted his head against Carlton's palm, and Juliet had to turn away to grab her keys so she wouldn't start bouncing up and down and clapping her hands like a poor imitation of a seal.

"Do you need water?" she said.

"Nope, there's a cooler in the car," he said. "What do you want to do for dinner?"

She almost told him then and there that she'd rather skip the whole evening out and stay in, but the cats must've rubbed off, because her curiosity stopped her; she wanted to see how all of this would play out, and to have a chance to savor the anticipation for these last few hours.

"We could make something here, but I'm good with take-out," she said. "I'm not really interested in using time to cook, you know?"

He barked out a laugh. "Definitely not."

"Does this count as a date?"

"Tomorrow counts as a date," Carlton said.

"Oh, so you mean tonight is just foreplay," she said, and was rewarded with the pleasure of watching him squirm. His ears started to turn red as he scowled at her, but it made her feel a little calmer to know that she wasn't the only one feeling nervous on top of everything else.

He finally muttered something under his breath and then jingled his keys in his pocket. "Ready?"

"Anytime you are," Juliet said, and followed him out to the car.

They fell back on talking about work as they drove out to the FCT. Carlton groused about Leilani's management style before abruptly diverting into an analysis of the two-day training program the department was holding next month. Vick had hired an outside firm to come in and give seminars on a whole deck of topics, but he'd heard from a contact up north that the firm also occasionally brought along all kinds of new toys to test out, including a particular type of laser sight that differed in small but apparently important ways from every other laser sight.

"It's only two days, you know we aren't going to get that much of a chance to try out all the fun stuff," she said. "Although at this point even sitting through a lecture sounds good, I swear the criminals of Santa Barbara all decided to take a vacation in some other city. Do you know what I've been dealing with? Lawn flamingos. Somebody stole a set of lawn flamingos from an old lady, and because she's the deputy mayor's great-aunt it's suddenly a priority-one case."

"We need a new deputy mayor," said Carlton.

"Why, thinking of running?"

He snorted. "Depends on how you feel about conjugal visits, because we both know I would murder somebody my first day in office."

"I don't know about that," said Juliet.

"My God, you don't think so?"

"No, I just think you'd probably kill someone during the campaign," she said, "and then where would I be?"

"Grief-stricken?" he suggested. "What's your poison today? Romero's not going to be as crowded."

"I don't want to work that hard." She looked out the window at the Front Country. "How about Tunnel Trail?"

He turned the car in that direction by way of answer. Juliet kept her eyes trained out the window, but, very gently, she set her arm on the center console with her palm turned up. It took a couple of miles, but soon enough Carlton's arm settled against hers, and he slid their fingers together.

They parked at the end of the lot and applied bug spray and sunscreen; Carlton took a couple of swigs from a bottle of water and then spit, and she made a face at him.

"What, O'Hara? You spit, too—don't pretend I haven't seen it."

"Not before we get started," she said. She had one foot propped up against his car while she adjusted her laces, and she was pretty sure he was shamelessly staring at her legs. It was possible she'd chosen her tightest pair of running pants to encourage shameless staring, although she'd only admit it under oath. "Ready?"

"Yep," he said, and followed her to the trailhead.

Tunnel Trail was four miles; the elevation climb wasn't as grueling as some of the other switchbacks in the area, but she didn't have much interest in talking once she'd started, either. Every now and then she'd point to some flower or tree they were passing, and Carlton would nod or roll his eyes or, occasionally, point out some other feature that caught his eye. Mostly they were silent. He was too tall for her to match her stride to his, but she did start timing her breaths against him, at first subconsciously and then deliberately.

After the first mile they settled into an easy gait, and Juliet felt her thoughts start to disengage and wander. She'd asked Carlton once what he thought about as they ran, and he'd given her a scathing look and a one-word answer of, "Running," but she suspected it was more likely that he thought about work; give him enough physical labor as a distraction, and with his attention otherwise occupied, he could work out the identity of Jack the Ripper. It was a trick that worked for her, too, just one more of the strange ways in which they were more alike than not.

When they passed a snake sunning itself on a rock, he said, "Juliet," and pointed. She always thought she'd been one for big romantic gesture—and she didn't doubt Carlton was _capable_ of the romantic gesture, however he liked to paint himself—but it was always the smallest things he did that captured her, like the way he said her name.

They climbed, slowly at first before the incline started to steepen, to Inspiration Point, and when they'd started to wind their way back down again Juliet stopped, tightened her ponytail, and said to Carlton, "Bet you can't make it back to the car before I do."

He wiped his face with the hem of his shirt, causing a temporary short in the circuitry of Juliet's head, and said, "That sounds like a surefire way for someone to get hurt, O'Hara."

"Yep," said Juliet, "it does."

There was a pause, during which they silently sized each other up and during which Juliet, at least, wondered if he'd take his shirt all the way off if she got him sweaty enough, and then the still moment broke and they took off together, scrambling for the lead.

They still had a good downhill haul before they'd be in spitting distance of the parking lot, so at first she let Carlton set the pace and focused on finding sure footing; but when they passed the rock where the snake was still sunning itself, she kicked herself into gear and pushed forward. She caught a flash of Carlton's face as she blazed past, and then there was nothing but trail before her.

She could feel him on her heels, though, dogging her as they passed a family of hikers and then dodged an old man who was nearly as pale as his overly friendly albino dog. "Give it up, Carlton!" she shouted.

A couple of footfalls later he shouted back, right in her ear, "You wish, O'Hara! I was knifed last month, what's your excuse?"

"Gotta give you something to chase!" she said, and then had to break off to pant for breath. They shot past the last of the trees, and she spotted the car—sixty yards left, and then thirty, and she stretched out her hand—

And a long arm reached past her and tagged the car half a second before she did.

"Ha!" Carlton crowed. "Eat it, O'Hara."

"No way, no, that is not even fair—it was first person to the car, not first person to _touch_ the car—"

"I'm sorry, but I'm finding it difficult to understand you. Must be how slow you're talking." She growled, and he laughed as he popped the trunk and pulled out her water bottle. She really started to see red, though, when he popped the top and starting chugging.

"Hey!" she said. "That is my water, Carlton, give it back—"

He smirked and held it over her head. "Something you want?"

"Give it!" she said, and made another leap at him. He smelled atrocious—they both did, since they were soaked through with sweat topped off with eau de bugspray—but when jumping only made him jerk the water out of her reach, she finally gave up that tactic in favor of climbing him.

She hadn't put much thought into it, beyond it being the knee-jerk reaction that years of wrestling with her brothers had trained into her. Carlton staggered a little under her weight as she used his shoulders to haul herself up, but it wasn't until her fingers closed over the water that she realized her face was pressed to his, that her legs were wrapped around his waist, and that both of them had stopped breathing.

"There are people here," she said into his mouth.

"314. Indecent exposure," he agreed, and then he kissed her anyway.

It went open-mouthed and hot without any concession to propriety. He sank down against the open trunk, and she banged her foot against the rear bumper as she shifted against him. They were plastered together from chest to hips, skin sticking where it touched; he had huge, dark circles of sweat under his arms, and the only reason she didn't was that her shirt was sleeveless. Everything about the situation should have disgusted her, but instead it was the single most erotic thing Juliet could remember happening.

Carlton's hand slid roughly up her neck and into her hair, and he tugged gently at her ponytail holder a couple of times until she reached back and pulled it out. Her hair fell around her shoulders, damp and uncomfortably heavy and almost painfully electric against her oversensitive skin. He wove his fingers through it, tugging on her scalp—and Juliet groaned.

When she pulled back, the number '314' lighting up her head, he looked...well, kind of like a drug addict, if it was possible to imagine Carlton Lassiter on opiates. His pupils were enormous, and his lids were heavy. He blinked slowly at her a couple of times, and then his eyes shot open and he hissed, "Did anyone see that?"

"God," she said, "I hope not."

He grimaced. "Not that I don't enjoy this, but…"

There was an expectant silence, and then Juliet said, "Oh. Right," and climbed off him.

Her water bottle had landed on the ground; she bent over, picked it up, and wiped it clean on the tail of her shirt. When she looked up again, she caught Carlton staring. He'd frozen with one hand halfway to the car door, and his mouth was slack.

"Indecent exposure," Juliet reminded him. He made a strangled noise and pulled a face at her, and she couldn't control the laughter that bubbled up from the pit of her stomach and spilled out her mouth. She didn't even try; in all honesty, she didn't even _want_ to try.

-

They were driving home when he asked if she wanted coffee.

"Now?" she said. "Sure, I could go for something cold."

"Good," he said, and steered them towards Starbucks. He bought her an iced coffee and a muffin, and she bought him a large coffee and prepared it with the appropriate sugar rituals, and, mutually delighted, they exchanged beverages and went back to the car. She was surprised when he didn't pull out to the left, towards her home, but instead pointed them at the shore.

"Carlton?"

"There's someplace I thought we should—that I wanted—" He huffed. "Look, O'Hara, you don't have to—"

It wasn't until he turned onto Hollin Street that she realized where he was taking her. "I don't mind," she said, but when she first caught sight of the lopsided silhouette of the warehouse where he'd been stabbed, a shudder went through her.

He parked in the alley and left his coffee in the car. She followed suit, and habitually checked behind her to make sure there was nobody following them. The sun was still high enough that the streetlights hadn't switched on, although it was close to dusk; she could still pick up the charred scent from the blown-out wall.

She thought about telling him that they didn't have to do this, but part of her—part of her thought they kind of did, that they needed to lay this piece of their old partnership to rest before they let the new thing between them ripen to fruition, so she ducked under the police tape across the open door when he held it up for her. She was not armed.

Someone had moved a lot of the shipping crates away, so they didn't have to wind their way through a labyrinth to get to the back corner; Juliet felt a little trapped anyway, enough that she started when Carlton took her hand and tugged her forward. His face was completely blank again as he led her unerringly to the open stretch of ground to the north and east, and the hand that was wrapped in his was the only part of her that felt warm.

The crime scene unit had done their job well. There wasn't any debris left except a small, dark stain—more mahogony than red—on the floor. Carlton stared down at that spot, and she stared at his face until he cleared his throat and looked back at her.

"Sometime," he said, "you're going to have to tell me the whole story."

"Everything I remember is in my report." She pulled away a little to squint at him. "You have read my report, right?"

"I want to hear it from you."

"Oh," she said. "I threw up on Vick's shoes."

"That was not included in the report."

She put her head on his shoulder and said, "No, it wasn't." He slid his arm around her waist; his skin smelled like sweat and gunpowder. "How did it go?" she asked. "That prayer, the one on Soledad's ring."

He squeezed her once and then let her go, circling around the stain to look at the ceiling, the crates, and then the ground. Apparently content, he squatted down to inspect the blood he'd left on the concrete. "Still a lot we don't know. That ring and how it got in the kid's stomach. Why Soledad was here. Who she was working with."

"Don't tell me that you're giving up now," she said. "Someone's gotta take the rest of the organization apart."

He stood up and looked at her. "And you and I are the ones to do it?"

"Call it a side project," she said. "I think we have something a little bigger as our primary focus now."

"I'd tell you I agree with you, but then I'd have to swear you to secrecy. Christ, Juliet—" He looked at her, and then he shook his head. "You wanted to know about the prayer."

"I did."

He took a deep breath and looked up. "O Immaculata," he said, searchingly, like he was trying to remember the words; and then they must have come back to him. "O Immaculata, Queen of Heaven and Earth, refuge of sinners and our most loving mother, God has—God has willed to entrust the entire order of mercy to you." And then, as they always did in the end, his eyes dropped to her. "I, Carlton, a repentant sinner, cast myself at your feet, humbly imploring you to take me with all that I am and have, wholly to yourself as your possession and property. Please make of me, of all my powers of soul and body, of my whole life, death, and eternity, whatever most pleases you."

The words rolled through her and rocked her, but it was his intent expression and the quiet sureness of his voice that finally dragged her under. She went willingly and at long last, and, forgetting air, found in his face everything she needed.

"Wow," she said.

"Yeah."

"That wasn't what was on the ring."

He shrugged. "It was the important part."

"I trust you," said Juliet. "Now come on, your coffee's getting cold."

After that, her anxiety faded in favor of a calm, thrumming anticipation—a note that started low in her body and built outward until even her fingertips tingled. She requested Thai for dinner, and Carlton took them to The King & I, close to the Station; on the drive over, she teased him about his middle name and endured his return volleys about how much she disliked hers.

"There's a reason I don't use my middle name, and the reason is that I hate it. And really, don't you don't think Juliet is enough?" she said. "I can't imagine what my dad would've chosen over Lynn if he'd gotten his way. Probably Portia or Miranda or...Hermione...and somehow those are all still better than what I have."

"Most people would argue that Lynn is better than Jebediah," Carlton allowed, "although, O'Hara, I maintain that only presidents can get away with having two initials."

"Come on, how often do you use all three initials anyway? You always write 'C.L.' on forms, I've seen you."

"Do you have something against 'M.J.L.,' is that what this is about?"

"Oh my God," she said, and put her hands over her face. When she peeped out, he was smirking at her as he threw the car into park. "Oh my God, you did catch that."

"You mean that I caught that you don't think Muscum Jebediah is a good enough name for _our_ firstborn son? Why yes, I do believe I caught that."

"I did not mean to say that," Juliet said. "It was an accident, you weren't supposed to notice—oh my God, I was dating Shawn—"

"There you go," he said. She furrowed her brow at him. "If you're going to be horrified about anything, I'd say dating Spencer is the right choice."

"Oh, shut up, you were the one who told me moving on was a good idea," she said, and smacked him on the shoulder. "Anyway," she added, striving for flippant, "you were just jealous—"

"Yes," he said.

Her segue into menu choices died in her mouth. "What?"

"Yes," he said, "I was jealous."

Half a dozen replies occurred to her immediately. The openness he was showing her was a surprise, although—although, Juliet thought, it shouldn't have been. He had never committed to her with any less than his whole self. She could tell him so, or tell him that he'd hid it well, or tell them that although he'd hid it well, she'd known anyway. She could tell him that if the situation had been reversed she would have had the same reaction, not because she bore him any ill-will or because she wanted to hurt his partner, but because she always felt an instinctive petulance when he started showing other people the same favor he always showed her.

Instead she said, "Good."

"Good?"

"Good," she said. "You should've been jealous. I wanted to make you jealous. It was petty, and it was totally, totally immature, and it makes me a little sick to think of how I used Shawn, but yeah. Good."

"Huh," said Carlton.

"And not to change the subject, but we've been sitting in the parking lot staring at each other for five minutes now, and I am hungry."

"Whoa there, O'Hara, don't be so needy. I'm not sure I want to be in a relationship with someone who expects dinner."

"Says the velcro man," she retorted. She was dangerously close to climbing into his lap right then.

"Mi krop?"

"If this is a special occasion, I want every appetizer on the menu—and oooh, can we get some of those little dumplings?"

"They took those off the menu."

"Sometimes they'll make them for you anyway," she said, and opened her car door. 

"If you go in there and bat your eyelashes for dumplings," he said over the roof, "I might get jealous enough to discharge my weapon."

"Whoa, Carlton! Save that for the bedroom."

He stared at her like he couldn't decide whether to blush, frown, or laugh, and she solved the dilemma for him by cracking up.

"Sure, laugh," he grumbled. He put a hand on her back to guide her along the sidewalk, and when they reached the front door, he opened it for her; she returned the favor by holding the inner door, and was pleased when he didn't even break stride at her courtesy. It constantly amazed her that he managed to have all of that old-fashioned priggishness and none of the misogyny. She desperately wanted to meet his mother; there weren't many men who could play with the old boys' club but were also capable of displaying a basic respect and even _liking_ for women in power.

She did suspect that he was going to be terribly, insufferably clingy in a relationship, though, and that it was that quality as much as any other that had driven the previous women in his life away. That was fine—she could be clingy herself, not in a way that turned her relationship into a public circus, but in a way that meant she didn't mind if they lived in each other's pockets. She knew how to draw lines, and he knew how to recognize them, too; that was important.

"What were those dumplings called again?" he said.

"I don't know, but if you go into the kitchen and bat your eyes, I might get angry enough to discharge my—"

His hand was resting against her ribcage, and he drummed his fingers just below her armpit. She always tried to hide how ticklish she was, but the problem was that he knew anyway; she had to bite her lips to stop herself from snorting as she squirmed against him.

She was still shaking with the effort of controlling herself in public when they stepped up to the counter to order. The waitress hollered something in Thai over her shoulder and then turned to them with a friendly, distracted smile, like they were any other couple, and Juliet realized that they _were_ any other couple. The waitress didn't see them as professionals in a working partnership, she didn't see anything wrong with how they stood—practically on top of each other, although that habit long predated any mutual confessions—she didn't see anything wrong at all. Not the decade-plus between them, although Juliet knew that Carlton's worry over that was going to come back to bite her in the butt; not their stances, the way he angled himself so he could watch the door over her head while she kept a line-of-sight into the dining area; not even they way they talked over each other and then broke off to confer in shorthand as they ordered. 

When Carlton finished rattling off the final adjustments to his drunken noodles, they sat down in the hard chairs next to the door to wait, and she didn't think twice about tucking herself up against his side. They were a couple, after all, just like any other.

He drummed his fingers against the back of her chair and pretended he wasn't reading over her shoulder while she checked her phone; she had new messages from her firefighter friend, Val, and from Nadine, who needed info on a contact, and her oldest brother wanted to know if she planned on coming to his youngest son's birthday party in a couple of weeks. She texted him back, and in full view of Carlton's wandering eyes: _You know it. Save me two seats!_

"O'Hara, I am running out of bribes to make your nephews like me," he said.

"Don't worry about it," she told him. "They like you fine, as long as you remember to be _slightly_ less competitive. Oh, and probably lay off the weird, morbid factoids, at least around the kids. That kind of stuff is right up Robbie's alley, though." She turned a little more sideways in her chair to lean into him while she emailed Nadine the list of requested phone numbers. His fingers were still tapping idly, sometimes against the chair and sometimes against her arm. She'd always like his hands; the backs were as uniformly hairy as the rest of him, and he had big, square palms with long fingers. Octave-spanners, her mother would have said, although Juliet was more taken with the thought that he could probably palm a basketball, and easily.

They ended up with two paper sacks of food and a smaller one filled with sauces; the aroma was delicious, and an admittedly nice counterpoint to two sweaty detectives who kept plastering themselves together. She was looking forward to showering and eating, if not as much as she was looking forward to what was going to happen after (or between, or during) the showering and eating.

After she helped Carlton stow the take-out in the backseat, she leaned back to pop her back and then turned her chin to crack her neck. 

"Long week?" he said.

"You have no idea," she said, and then rethought that. "...Actually, you do, which is really nice. I've never had a boyfriend who understands why sometimes I just want to complain about court dates before."

He gave her a look as he turned to back the car out. "I was married to a lawyer, O'Hara. If you want to talk about poor communication, I trump."

"But you aren't married anymore," she said.

That puzzled him. "You were there for the end of that whole sorry crapfest."

There was a beat before she said, "This isn't some kind of payback for the jealousy thing we talked about earlier, right?"

"What—no," he said.

"Okay. Just...just making sure. You know, I feel kind of obligated to point out right now that I am not going to leave you, and we are not going to fall apart, and this whole thing isn't going to end with one of us watching the other walk out the door."

"O'Hara—" He sighed. "Juliet. As much as I have come to appreciate your sense of optimism, and as little as I care to ruin the weekend, you have no way of knowing what will or will not happen. Statistically—"

"No," she said. "Carlton—Carlton, look at me." They were still sitting in the parking lot, and when he stopped pretending the adjust the rearview mirror and turned to face her, she said, "We've already been through the hard stuff. I'm not saying it's going to be all uphill from here, but we…" They had the measure of each other, is what she meant to say, and they knew what they could endure together; the right words escaped her, though, and she shook her head. "We know each other. Everything else is just...the rest of our life."

"Our life, huh?" he said.

"You know I would stick around forever to prove you wrong, and I promise, I have a lot better motivation for staying than that." His eyes cut away from her again; she didn't reach out for fear of spooking him, but she did say, "Carlton, a little hope isn't going to kill you."

"Too much of it might," he argued, but he'd already lost, and they both knew it; he might have been looking away, but his hand still found hers. She caught him tight and didn't let go.

"Fine," he said. "You win."

"I always win."

"You do _not_ —oh, nice cover, pretending it's a joke. Egomaniac."

"Kettle."

"You always have to have the last word, don't you," he said, and then proceeded to back the car out and drive them home one-handed. As a law enforcement official, Juliet couldn't condone the technique, but she found that she lacked all interest in issuing him a reprimand. He had that effect on her.

-

When they got to her apartment, she found him a towel and shoved him in the direction of the shower to buy herself a little time. The take-out went in the oven to keep it warm, and she fed the cats at the same time she was trying to fling running gear in every direction, which meant she almost put her watch in a water bowl and that she had to hop around on one foot, untying her shoelaces while Flower batted after them frantically. She cleaned the cats' litter, too, while they were distracted by dinner, and then she set out plates and napkins, and then there was nothing to do but wait for her turn in the shower.

Carlton was still damp when he came out; he was dressed in blue plaid pajama pants and an undershirt, and his hair was ruffled. She dodged around him, yelling something garbled over her shoulder about the TV remote, and bolted the bathroom door behind her. Unfortunately, her bathroom was small and lacked a decent fan, so the interior was akin to a sauna. She wiped the mirror clear with a towel, examined her hair, wondered if it was worth taking the time to wash it, and ultimately decided Carlton's reaction to her shampoo was worth the extra time expenditure.

She shaved her legs again, too, for her own peace of mind, and then cloistered herself in her bedroom with Thumper and the hairdyer. He sat on the bed and watched her while she worked, his paws aligned neatly in front of him, although he did plaster his ears back when she accidentally fumbled the dryer and shot a jet of hot air in his direction. After a while his eyes began to squint, and by the time her hair was nearly dry, he was curled on his side, the tip of his tail waving gently as he dreamed his feline dreams. She'd never been able to look at a sleeping cat and feel anything but relaxed; it was soothing to have him there, his motor engine purr audible any time she switched the dryer off.

And then there was nightwear to worry about. Juliet was aware she was giving the whole affair approximately one thousand times more thought than it required, but she'd been trained to overthink things, and this was important, and why hadn't she gone shopping for pajamas? She didn't have much by way of sexy sleepwear, and she doubted Carlton would find the men's nightshirt she'd bought at Target that alluring, and—and, she reminded herself, he hadn't had any problem with smelly, exercise-edition O'Hara, she could probably put on a sackcloth and be fine. This was reminding her very much of the time she'd changed her hairstyle three times in one week to provoke a reaction from him, and then he'd claimed he hadn't noticed at all.

Finally, frustrated at her own indecision, she put on the cotton shorts and pink tee at the top of the drawer. She stopped to scratch Thumper's head on the way out; he was too sleepy to protest, and only amped up his purring at the attention.

"Okay," Juliet told herself, and then she went to find her partner.

He was slumped on her couch with his feet stretched out in front of him, watching _A League of Their Own_ , and without any prelude Juliet marched over to him and climbed onto his lap.

"Oof," he said.

She realized she hadn't entirely thought this one through—apparently her planning ran up to the point of shaving her legs and failing to choose pajamas and no further. "We don't have to do any—" she got as far as saying, and then he pulled her forward and covered her mouth with his own.

Her heart was racing so fast she could count her pulse from the throbbing in her ears, and her hands were shaking as she slid her hands up to his shoulders. They were nice shoulders—they were _great_ shoulders, broader than you'd expect from his lanky build, and her hands found purchase on his traps. He jerked his legs up to send her sliding even closer, and then she ground down against him. It felt so good that she shifted her weight forward and did it again; apparently the preceding months really had served as foreplay, because she was primed and ready, building to a climax even though he hadn't done much more than insert a hand up the back of her shirt.

That changed fast. She'd just reached behind herself to coax that hand around to the front of her shirt when he gripped her by the hips, flipped them over, and dropped to his knees in front of her.

He was halfway finished with sliding her shorts down her legs when Juliet's brain caught up. "Wait," she said. "Wait, what are you—?"

He removed her shorts and took her by the ankle to lift her foot back over his head, so he was once again between her spread thighs. She was not wearing underwear.

"What does it look like I'm doing, O'Hara?"

She cleared her throat. "First?"

"Yes," he said.

"And you don't want to—"

"If you have any objections, by all means."

And then her brain _really_ caught up to her and told her to stop arguing. "Nope," she said. Her voice squeaked like a teenager's. "No. That's—carry on."

He smirked at her as he slid his hands up, between the couch cushions and her ass, and used his new grip to hike her hips up; and then he lowered his head. She was already wet enough that she could feel herself, and at the first touch of his mouth between her legs she shuddered hard. He was probably still smirking, because he was a bastard, but by the time his fingers got involved he had to pin one of her thighs to the couch because her legs kept rising to lock around his head—she'd lost that much motor control.

She was—

"Down," she said, "down down down, _Carlton_."

She was so—

"There," she said. He slid a finger into her, and she said, "There, Carlton, right there."

She was so close—

Her orgasm broke over her and broke her open. She spasmed hard around him, and her brain lit up like a firecracker, her nerves responded like fuses. He made her see stars.

When she swam up out of the darkness and back to him, she found that he was watching her with contented eyes. One of his thumbs was tracing over her belly and her hip in soothing spirals; her leg was still draped over his shoulder, and she was pretty sure she'd thumped him in the back with her heel at least once.

"All right?" he said.

She hummed contentment back at him and managed to slur, "Well, I'm definitely, definitely not nervous anymore."

"Good," he said, and shoved himself to his feet. "Time to move this to the bed."

"I don't want to walk," she said. "Let's stay here. Let's stay here and do that again." Her legs lolled open; she was distantly aware that with any of her previous lovers, this would have embarrassed her, but he was wiping at his chin with the back of his hand and wearing an expression that held amusement and pride in equal measure. She'd be happy to see that expression on her face always—even the smugness, considering it was well-earned.

"You might be young enough that your knees can take an entire night of that, but not all of us are. Come on," he said, and took her hands to haul her up.

"Nooooo." She flopped into him, accidentally and delightfully verifying that he was still highly interested in the evening's proceedings. "I don't think my legs work."

"Your legs will be fine." He managed to hook an arm around her waist and heave her upright; she immediately collapsed against him, and he huffed into her hair. "Walk, Juliet."

" _You_ walk."

He snorted and started to drag her across the room. She didn't resist, but she didn't help much, either; her legs felt like some marionette master had suddenly cut all the strings. Just before they reached the hallway he gave up, slid his arm behind her knees, and lifted her off her feet entirely.

Juliet went limp. "Now you're spoiling me."

"You deserve it," he said, turning sideways to maneuver her through a door. "Watch your head—there you go." He dropped her on the bed, braced himself over her, and kissed her, which was impetus enough for her to sit up to meet him; she had just hooked her fingers into the waistband of his pants when he backed away and said, "Wait here."

"Carlton? Carlton, where are you—"

"Condoms!" he shouted back. He sounded a little frantic, and it occurred to her that he probably wasn't half as unruffled as he appeared. The reminder that they'd barely gotten started was enough to wipe at least some of the languor from her body, and she pushed herself upright and yanked the comforter out of the way.

She was in the middle of piling her decorative pillows on the floor when a thought occurred to her. And—well, why not? They were long past the point of this being an exercise in trust, and although she was still thrilled with finally being able to touch him, there was a freedom that came with the bedrock foundation they'd already built. She'd never had a relationship that started out like this one, and from her current perspective it was hard to find anything in her past that could compete.

"Do we…" She cleared her throat and started again, more loudly. "Do we really need those?"

He reappeared so fast she was surprised he didn't leave speed lines down the hall. "What?"

Juliet shrugged. "I'm on birth control, and we know we're both clean."

She almost laughed at his face as she watched him work through that. "It won't take that long to dig them out of my bag—" he started to say, and then she did laugh.

"Carlton, I'm not trying to save you the trouble of finding the condoms," she said, and then reminded herself to be specific. He didn't always do well with vague instructions. "I'm just saying that...and I'm not trying to pressure you...all I'm saying is that I am in favor of not using the condoms."

He went completely still. She'd seen him draw into himself like that before—in the field, when they were tracking down a perp, or in meetings, when he was being told something he didn't want to hear. The difference now was that instead of shutting off, his face was wholly open.

Out of a sense of investigative curiosity, she pulled her shirt over her head. It had the opposite effect of making him move.

"Carlton?" she said. "Did I break you?"

"Nng." He shook himself all over. "Unfair advantage."

"Condoms?" she prompted.

"Condoms. Uh. As nice as that sounds, birth control isn't 100% effective, and I'd rather not have any little O'Lassiters running around. Yet."

"That is...incredibly sensible," she said. She was enjoying the way he couldn't seem to pull his gaze away from her breasts. "Definitely sensible."

"God," he said, "I really am an idiot," and then he disappeared again. He was back a few seconds later with prophylactics, which he deposited on the nightstand. Juliet, meanwhile, grabbed him by the front of his shirt and yanked him down onto the bed.

"Hi," she said.

"Hi," he said. She kissed him. There'd been a lot of kissing, and still not enough.

She was at a distinct disadvantage, though, because he was still entirely dressed and here she was, flashing him all the good parts when he hadn't given her anything to look at in return. Except his face—it was a nice face—and his forearms—they were defined in a way that made the hair on the back of Juliet's neck stand up.

She did her best to pull his shirt over his head, but it was a struggle; they were both tangled on the bed, and he was trying to gather her hair at the nape of her neck at the same time. After a lot of effort and some muffled laughter, she finally managed to get it over his head and then off his arms, and she threw it on the floor with more than a little vehemence. 

He grinned at her. "Didn't realize you like it rough."

"Oh, shut up," she said, and swatted at him like she had a hundred times before; but this time her hand landed on bare skin. It was startling to remember that despite how well they knew each other, and how much she'd thought about having him in her bed, they hadn't seen each other at all in this context. Part of her was still trying to wrap her head around catching him in pajamas, or anything that wasn't his usual tie-and-holster look, and here he was, bare-chested and looking at her like he wanted to eat her alive.

That was fine; she wanted to eat him alive, too. In fact, she could think of nothing more desirable than devouring each other. She propped her elbows on either side of his head and kissed him. He smelled like soap, like her soap, and like man—shaving lotion and hair pomade, and she only now realized that he'd shaved for her in the bathroom; his usual five o'clock shadow was absent—and somehow, underneath it all, he still smelled of gunpowder.

The taste she'd had of him had done nothing to satiate her appetite, she only wanted him more, and more, and more. "And your pants are still on," she said, accidentally.

He paused with the pad of one fingertip on her left nipple and cautiously said, "They are."

"I am going to do something about that," she announced, and reapplied herself to his drawstring. When she had it undone, she said, "Up," and he hiked his hips off the bed so she could pull his pants down.

She made it to mid-thigh before she stopped and cocked her head. "Hmm."

"What?" he said. She had to work to keep her face straight at the immediate alarm in his voice.

"Are you sure this is normal, Carlton?"

"Is what—what do you mean? What's not normal?"

Her self-control cracked at that point, and she burst into laughter. "Sorry," she gasped, "I'm sorry, I just couldn't resist—"

"Oh, that was not sporting, O'Hara," he said, scowling at her. She was laughing so hard she missed him tensing up, and then he retaliated by rolling her over and pinning her to the mattress. 

She let him hold her there for a moment while she squirmed against him; he was so much bigger than her, pleasantly heavy against her body, and warm, and he smelled good, and she had to remind herself that her pride was at stake before she was distracted by the tendons standing out in his neck. Her next move worked mostly because she managed to take him by surprise and because he was still hobbled by his pants; she pulled him down, and when he jerked back instinctively, she bucked up, jamming her hip into him and torquing her body until she could use her legs to flip him.

"Guard reversal," she said. "And you scoffed at my Krav Maga—"

"Never again," he swore. "Although, O'Hara, if you don't mind…" He sat up effortlessly and kicked his pants the rest of the way off. Her hands ended up on his chest—he really was pleasantly hairy all over—and his erection ended up almost but _not quite_ where she wanted it.

"Oh," said Juliet.

"I—fuck," he hissed. "Condom."

"Condom. Condom condom—Carlton where did you put the oh never mind," she said. She dug frantically for a packet, managed to slow herself enough to tear it open carefully, and then reached down and rolled it onto him. The wrapper ended up stuck to her leg and she couldn't bring herself to care, because he was adequate, more than adequate, perfectly adequate in her hand, and she should tell him that, she should tell him that she'd only been teasing him—

And then she looked up, into his face, and found that he wasn't thinking about anything but her. It was written there, all over his features, and every bit of his focus, of his stubborn intensity, of his ridiculousness and devotion and grit and honesty was locked onto her. She kept one of her hands against his chest for balance as she slid herself onto him, and then her other hand rose to find the red line scored against his ribcage from where he'd been stabbed.

"Ten-thirteen?" he said, meaning, _Advise conditions?_

She exhaled shakily, in fits and spurts, and then inhaled and remembered the dream where the scent of gunpowder had come from her pillow. "Ten-four," she said, _okay_ , and rocked her hips. His head jerked back, and she barely managed to get a hand behind him before he banged his skull into the headboard.

Neither of them lasted long after that. The release was as much emotional as it was physical; she felt like they'd been waiting for this for years, and it made them both a little desperate. He wriggled a hand between their bodies to give her something to grind against, and his other hand found its way under her hair to brace her spine. She rocked on him, and rocked again, and rocked harder; and this time her climax started in her toes and built slowly, a crescendo that rolled over her like a tide.

When the tide receded, she found that he had his arms wrapped around her, and that his head was slumped on her shoulder. They would do this again, she realized—they could do this again, every day, as many times as they wanted, for the rest of their lives. She felt a little bit like an idiot, to think that she almost sacrificed this—not just the physicality, but the _intimacy_ —in favor of sharing an unmarked car for a couple of hours a day.

She was about to tell him that when he kissed her lightly on the cheekbone and said, "If you ever want to shower at my house, I snaked my drains."

"That's...good to know, and also you make no sense to me."

"Please," he said. "A detective of your caliber doesn't deserve her badge if she can't reason out a few things."

She lifted off him enough to retrieve the condom, tied it off, and dropped it over the side of the bed. "Deducing Carlton Lassiter?" she said, and sat back on his thighs while she combed her fingers through her hair. "Hmm...let's see. You look happy—something good must have happened to you recently."

"Elementary. Keep going." He dragged her down until there were lying on their sides, sharing a pillow as they faced each other, and then he reached behind her and pulled the covers over them both.

"You're in love?" she suggested. Most of her visible world was taken up by a fraction of his face and dominated by one bright blue eye.

"You can do better than that," he said, but under the blankets his hand found its way to her hip.

"You're in love with me," Juliet said.

"Subjective. And you're biased. But true," he admitted. She slid her foot up his leg; her toes only stretched to the middle of his calves. She did like tall men. She liked honest men more, though, and she liked Carlton best of all.

"There's something I've been meaning to tell you," she said, "and then we should probably eat, the food's still in the oven."

"Let's hear it," he said.

"It's not—I've been thinking. And what I think is that I am really good at being self-reliant. That's partly me, because I can take care of myself, I like having that independence, and it's partly that I've taught myself not to depend on anyone else. No, just listen," she said, when he looked like he wanted to interrupt her, and he subsided, but he did prop himself up on one arm to look at her more closely.

"I used to think that in the interest of not coming home to an empty house every night, I would have to...settle? Compromise," she corrected. "I thought I would have to be okay with less than what I wanted, because I never thought—I like people, but I don't always think they're reliable, which goes back to...phew, a whole lot of family stuff that I don't want to talk about right now. But you," Juliet said. "You have become my rock. You have never forced me to settle for anything that diminishes who I am. You and I, we compromise together, but you don't expect me to compromise myself and my wants. And what I want is you," she added, in case he was still unsure on that point.

"You have me," he said.

"Good. I would like to have you again. Right now, Carlton."

"I thought we were supposed to eat," he said, but his hand was already working its way south.

"We can eat in a minute," Juliet said. "And you're going to have to do most of the work—I think my legs are broken again."

"Want me now, eating later, no work," he said. "Any other demands?"

She thought about that. "I want it hard."

"Can do."

"And I want to drive tomorrow."

"Not a chance," said Carlton. "Although if you're trying to negotiate, you are going about it in the right way."

She was still laughing when he slid into her; and he did give it to her hard enough that she swore her toes went numb; and eventually they even ate dinner, although it was past midnight and the dumplings had started to burn.

-

He did not let her drive, although Juliet felt she made a convincing argument, and the bickering went straight into what should be playing on the radio. They'd left Santa Barbara early in case they ran into traffic; she was wearing an Angels hat, he was wearing a Dodgers shirt, and they'd collectively made a record five attempts at getting dressed before they succeeded, mostly because they kept stripping each other out of their clothes but one time because Carlton managed to dump a cup of coffee on his shirt—which, he maintained, had been Juliet's fault for public nudity. She'd told him that it wasn't public if it was in her own home. At one point they'd been in the shower together. It was all highly distracting.

After they finally settled on an inoffensively neutral classic rock station, Juliet went fishing for his hand again. He didn't protest—he hadn't protested once, and she had a feeling that he was going to be even more of a teddy bear in private than she'd suspected. She wasn't much better, in all honesty, but there was no reason to share that with Carlton.

"So who's gonna win?" she said.

"That is a question of paramount stupidity," he said. "Of course you're going to say Angels, and of course I'm going to say Dodgers, which means I'm right and you're stuck with a team that still names a designated hitter."

"Designated hitting is sophisticated," she argued. "And we're leading 3-1 with the home advantage, so suck it."

"Oh, that's mature," he said.

"You are dating a younger woman, Carlton." She said it casually so she didn't give away how closely she was watching for his reaction; the sooner they worked out his hang-ups, the better off they'd be. She was happy to see that he didn't so much as blink. "Besides, you have a Wii hidden in your entertainment center."

"I don't see what that has to do with anything."

"Sure. You have a Sig hidden under there, too."

"I moved that behind the TV," he said. 

"Oh, of course, that makes _much_ more sense."

"You have a Lady Smith in your nightstand drawer," Carlton said, "and _you're_ judging _me?"_

"I...am willing to call this round a draw," she conceded.

"Angels fans. You always surrender in the end."

She refused to speak to him for ten whole minutes after that, until she remembered she wanted to ask him about a court appearance he'd made last week as a follow-up on one of their old cases. They'd managed to nab a mid-level pusher; he'd tried to cut a deal, but when he hadn't named anyone they hadn't already known about, the city had pressed charges.

"Went fine," Carlton said. "He won't be in for long, but at least they know we're watching. One of the parents of the kid who died of a heroin overdose testified, and O'Ryan didn't even flinch."

"It still amazes me that _heroin_ is the big thing at high schools. In my day we had pot, and we were happy to have it. Ewan used to grow it in the back of his closet," she admitted.

"Why Juliet, are you hiding a sordid past as a stoner?"

She laughed. "Hardly. I took a hit a couple of times with my brothers, but I figured out fast that even possession would look bad on an application to the police academy. You?"

"I started drinking when I was thirteen, but you didn't hear that." He squeezed her hand; his fingers had stayed laced through hers even through the ten minutes they hadn't been speaking.

"Cops with closets full of skeletons. No wonder we all go into law enforcement."

"Well, that, and to make the planet a better place," he said. "And world peace."

"Oh my God."

"No."

"You watched it."

"No."

"You watched _Miss Congeniality,_ didn't you?"

He huffed. "It might have been on back-to-back with _Legally Blonde_."

"I am so proud of you," Juliet said.

" _That's_ what makes you proud?"

"You're also very good at cunnilingus," she said.

He said, dryly, "Thanks."

"And you have awful—I mean it, Carlton, awful—taste in baseball, but you're going to be a fantastic father. And my cats like you."

"You make no sense to me."

"I know that isn't true," she said. "And you're an honest cop, and you're a good man."

He swallowed; she watched his throat work. "Are you trying to butter me up for something?"

Sensing an opportunity, she said, "Driving home?"

"No," he said. "You drove last time."

" _You_ drove last time. I haven't driven since the night you were, you know."

"Knifed?" he said.

"Knifed," she agreed. "Please don't let that happen again."

"I'll try," he said. In that moment, she almost couldn't handle how much he meant to her; the sun through the car window lit up the silver threads in his hair, and there was that faint, ever-present furrow to his brow as he watched the road. "That said, you should know that. Uh. I'm not always...great with words."

"I don't care," she said.

"I like that you don't," he returned. "And you know how I take my coffee, and you're an honest cop and a good woman, and the bravest person I've ever met, and the most determined. I like your hair. I like...just about everything about you, O'Hara." He grinned crookedly. "It's a novel experience."

She grinned back, a little misty, and said, "I knew you had a thing for my hair."

"And you are very good at fellatio," he said.

"Sweet-talker," said Juliet, and settled back in her seat to enjoy the sunshine.

The crowd was in full furor at Angels Stadium, or at least the traffic suggested as much. They finally found parking eight blocks away, and after Carlton made her write down their intersection and a list of landmarks, she dragged him down the sidewalk. They didn't pass a person who wasn't wearing blue or red, and after they dodged the scalpers and made it through the gate, Carlton bought her watery beer and a hotdog. The sun was high in the sky, and the air was sweet and sticky with humidity; when she spilled ketchup on herself, he pulled a napkin out of his pocket without any prompting.

It was June 20th, and Juliet figured that was as good a day as any to start the rest of her life.


End file.
